Class 

Book 

CopyriglitlJ? 

CGEXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





Harno Thornycroft, R. A., Sculptor 

ALFRED THE GREAT 

By permission of A //red Bowker, Mny or of Winchester, England, and Honorary Secretary 
of the Natio7ial Coinmemoration of King Alfred the Great 



A 

STUDENT'S HISTORY 

OF 

ENGLISH LITERATURE 




BT 



WILLIAM EDWAED SIMONDS 

(Ph. D., Stkassburg) 
professor of english literature in 

KNOX COLLEGE 




BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 




THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JAM 1903 

Copyright Entry 
CLASS XXq. No. 

COPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1902, 
BY WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



A 




PEEFACE 

The problems involved in the preparation of a book 
z like this are many ; their solution is often a matter of 
.3- experiment. In attempting A Student's History of 
Id^ .English Literature, the vs^riter makes small claim to 
originality in the method of his compilation. The ad- 
mirable text-books of Pancoast, of Moody and Lovett, 
of Halleck, and of Johnson, as v^^ell as the older stand- 
ard histories, have suggested many points of practical 
utility ; and the writer hastens to acknowledge his in- 
debtedness to his predecessors. 

In the interest of clearness the author has adopted 
the simplest possible division of his subject — that ac- 
cording to centuries ; and has relied upon the subdivi- 
sions of his chapters to emphasize properly the impor- 
tant literary movements of each period. He has assumed 
that as many as possible of the essential facts in literary 
history should be presented to his readers. Not only 
should the student become acquainted with the principal 
movements and epochs in our literary development — not 
only should he be given the opportunity to gain the 
comprehensive view that includes forces and influences 
which initiate and modify them — but he should also 
have before him what may be called the mechanical de- 
tails of the subject, — mere facts of literary record, 
neither picturesque nor inspiring in themselves, but in- 
dispensable even to an elementary knowledge of liter- 



iv 



PREFACE 



ary history. The writer vhas, therefore, followed the 
biographical method more closely than some authors 
who have briefly summarized their biographical studies 
and enlarged the scope of their technical criticism. 

The suggestions for study have been prepared in the 
hope that they will assist both pupil and teacher in the 
study of literature. In their preparation the writer has 
also kept in mind the not impossible student out of 
school who, without professional assistance or direction, 
is ambitious to become really acquainted with litera- 
ture as well as with its history. In these suggestions 
has been embodied such analysis and criticism as 
seemed reasonable in a text-book of this grade. It is 
probable that the courses suggested will be found in 
some instances more extended than the time allotted 
will permit ; of course the teacher will be guided by 
his own discretion in their use. Will it not be advan- 
tageous occasionally to base the exercise entirely upon 
these suggested studies without requiring in the class- 
room a formal recitation of the biographical details 
given in the preliminary sketch ? The author will wel- 
come all criticism based upon practical experience with 
these notes. 

Much of the material used in sections dealing with 
the romancers and novelists has been taken from chap- 
ters in the author's Introduction to a Study of Eng- 
lish jFiction^ published by D. C. Heath and Company. 
In the biographical sketch of Walter Scott and the 
study suggestions upon Ivanhoe^ similar use has been 
made of material included in the school edition of Ivan- 
hoe published by Scott, Foresman and Company. The 
author has drawn also, in the account of De Quincey, 



PREFACE 



V 



upon the biographical introc action to his edition o£ De 
Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars^ published by Ginn 
and Company. For the cordial permission of these 
houses to use this material, the writer desires to ex- 
press his thanks. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP, PAGE 

I. The ANGLO-SAxoisr Period 1 

Britain and the English ...... 2 

Anglo-Saxon Poetry ....... 8 

Anglo-Saxon Prose ....... 29 

The Nation and the Languag'e . . . . .35 

II. The Anglo-Norman Period 41 

The New Invasion ........ 41 

Development of Middle English Literature . . 43 

The Age of Chancer .59 

Geoffrey Chaucer : Poet of the Dawn .... 64 

III. The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries ... 82 

The Fifteenth Century : The Renascence ... 82 

First Half of the Sixteenth Century .... 89 

Representative Prose and Verse in the Elizabethan Age 98 

Development of the English Drama .... 108 
William Shakespeare and his Successors . . .129 

rV. The Seventeenth Century 170 

The Last of the Elizabethans : Bacon .... 170 

The Puritan Movement : Milton . . . . 179 
Seventeenth Century Lyrics . . • . . .199 

The Restoration : Bunyan, Dryden .... 206 

V. The Eighteenth Century 222 

The Augustan Age of English Prose .... 222 

The Poetry of Alexander Pope 249 

Rise of the English Novel . . . . . . 265 

Essayists of the Second Half ...... 281 

The Romantic Movement in English Poetry . . 303 

VI. The Nineteenth Century 316 

The New Poetry : WordsAvorth, Coleridge . . . 316 

The Romantic Movement in Fiction : Scott . . . 333 

The Revolutionary Poets : Byron, Shelley . . . 350 

Romanticism in English Prose : Lamb, De Quincey . 369 

The Great Essayists : Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin . 389 

Maturity of the Novel : Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot 412 

The Victorian Poets : Browning, Tennyson . . . 481 

Index 465 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Altked the Great Frontispiece 



From the statue by Harno Thornycroft, R. A. By permis- 
sion of Alfred Bowker, Mayor of Winchester, England, and 
Honorary Secretary of the National Commemoration of King- 
Alfred the Great. 

England in the Anglo-Saxon Age 7 

Reduced Facsimile of a Page of Beowulf Manuscript in 

THE British Museum 15 

Facsimile taken from an Eleventh Century Manuscript 51 

Containing an account of the wonders of the East. 
Facsimile of a Page from Caxton's Second Edition of 

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales 85 

Printed about 1484. 
The Interior of the Swan Theatre, about 1596 ^ . . . . 123 
From a sketch, in the University Library at Utrecht, by 
Johannes de Witt, a Dutch scholar. 

Queen Elizabeth 135 

After an engraving by Holl from an original portrait in 
Edward VII.'s collection, St. James Palace. Autograph from 
Winsor's America. 
Facsimile of Title-Page to the Second Edition of Hamlet 153 
In the quarto texts (1611). Reproduced from the original 
copy in the Boston Public Library. 

Facsimile of the First Page of Paradise Lost 189 

Reproduced from an original copy of the first edition (1667) 
in the Boston Public Library. 
Facsimile of Title-Page, Pilgrim's Progress, First Edition 213 

Scene in a Typical English Coffee-House 229 

From the heading of an old Broadside of 1674. 
Reproduction of Original Frontispiece in First Edition 

of Robinson Crusoe (1719) 269 

Map Showing Places Connected with English Literary 

History 465 



4 



A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENG- 
LISH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER I 
THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 

I. Britain and the English. 
II. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. 
III. Anglo-Saxon Prose. 
IV. The Nation and the Language. 

By the term Literature is meant those written 
or printed compositions which preserve the 
thought and experience of a race recorded 
in artistic form. The element of beauty must be 
present in greater or less degree, and such works must 
be inspired by a purpose to afford intellectual pleasure 
to the one who reads them or hears them read. Books 
written to give information merely are not usually in- 
cluded in this term ; text-books, scientific treatises, 
chronicles, reports, and similar compilations hardly be- 
long to literature; but works in which the imagina- 
tive power of the writer is engaged, those which move 
or stir the feelings and appeal to the sense of beauty 
which is found in every intelligent mind — these make 
up the real literature of a people. Such are poems 
and dramas, prose works also, in which these elements 



2 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



may find a place ; works which are distinguished by 
the quality called style^ and which reflect more or less 
of the personality which gave them birth. Hence it 
has happened frequently that books designed to inform 
have also partaken of these other qualities as well, and 
have found a permanent place in the literature of our 
land ; such, for example, are the reviews of Macaulay, 
the political pamphlets of Swift and Burke, the his- 
tories of Gibbon and Hume, the narrative papers of 
De Quincey, the essays of Ruskin and Carlyle. 

The history of our English Literature begins almost 
coincidently with the arrival and settlement of large 
companies of our Teutonic ancestors in Britain about 
450 A. D. 

T. BRITAIN AND THE ENGLISH. 

So far as history records, the earliest inhabitants of 
Britain were a Celtic race, the Cymri. These 

Britain 

and the people were not unknown to the Romans even 
Romans. -^^ ^^^^ early times; in B. C. 55 the island 
was invaded by Julius Caesar, although at that period 
no permanent colony was established. In the next cen- 
tury new invasions followed, and for many years the 
island was a frequent battle-ground for the Roman le- 
gions as they advanced in their conquest of the world. 
Gradually their victories in Britain carried civilization 
well to the north, until the Roman frontier was marked 
by a great line of defense, crossing from the Frith of 
Forth to the Clyde. For four hundred years the Ro- 
man occupation continued. Britain became a colony ; 
native citizens of Rome settled there, and their descend- 
ants remained. Permanent camps were established in 
places of vantage ; splendid military roads were built 
traversing the island ; the fields were tilled ; the mines 
were worked ; seaports were developed ; the exports of 



THE ROMANS AND THE TEUTONS 



3 



Britain became an important factor in the commerce 
of Europe. Even the luxuries of Roman life were not 
lacking in wealthy fortified towns like York, Lincoln, 
and London. However, the legions were withdrawn 
from Britain in 410 A. D. in order to defend the empire 
in Italy from the incursions of the Goths ; and the de- 
cay of Roman civilization began. The rapidity of its 
disappearance is noteworthy. Besides the solid paving 
of their famous roads and the remains of their massive 
walls, scarcely a trace of this domination is to be found. 
Only a half-dozen words remain in our language as the 
undisputed heritage of that long period to remind us that 
the Latin tongue was during these four hundred years 
the native speech of the rulers of the land. The names of 
many English towns, like Chester, Winchester, Worces- 
ter, Gloucester, Lancaster, and Doncaster, preserve the 
Latin castra^ a camp ; the English street (as in Wat- 
ling Street^ the name of an ancient Roman road run- 
ning north from Dover to Chester) represents, doubt- 
less, the Latin strata via, a paved way ; while partus, 
fossa, villa, and vallum may at this time have supplied 
the words which give us modern port, fosse, villa, 
and wall. The native Celts had been partially chris- 
tianized as early as the third century ; by the begin- 
ning of the fifth the Church in Britain had attained a 
decided growth, and was an institution of considerable 
power. 

Upon the withdrawal of the Roman arms, the south- 
ern part of the island was speedily overrun ^g^^^j^g 
by fierce tribes from the highlands of the 
north, and by other tribes no less fierce from Ireland 
on the west. Invasions by the Northmen and by the 
Germans from the shores of the North Sea and the 
Baltic were frequent also on the eastern coast. Par- 
ticularly these last, appearing suddenly and settling 



4 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PEKIOD 



with their white-winged ships, like swift and merciless 
birds of prey, were a constant menace to the dwellers 
along the coast, whose homes they burned, and whose 
property they stole away. In 449 the Britons invited 
aid from one of these same Teutonic tribes, and in that 
year a colony from Jutland, under the twin chiefs 
Hengest and Horsa, settled on the island of Thanet off 
the coast of Kent. But the Jutes themselves soon 
turned invaders, and as fleet followed fleet, bringing 
successive bands of their kinsfolk, Kent also became 
their possession, together with various tracts along the 
southern coast. Perhaps because of the success of 
these first-comers, perhaps because of the crowding of 
vigorous warlike neighbors, representatives of two other 
tribes, the Angles and the Saxons, peoples nearly re- 
lated to the Jutes, joined in the general migration of 
the tribes. Dwellers originally in the low-coast coun- 
tries of North Germany bordering on the North Sea, 
inhabiting a part of the Danish peninsula and territory 
extending westward as far as the mouth of the Emms, 
a region beset with fog and damp, and constantly ex- 
posed to the incursions of the sea, the life of these 
hardy Teutons was one continuous struggle with storm 
and flood. No wonder that in their eyes the island of 
Britain appeared a bright and winsome land, or that 
they were attracted to its sunnier shore. The ocean 
ways had long been familiar to them, and for genera- 
tions before the final movement their adventurous bands 
of sea-rovers had pillaged and harried the British 
coasts. These tribes had much in common : they were 
of one parent stock, their language was practically one, 
their social customs and institutions were alike. Their 
religion was the common religion of the north. The 
names of our week days preserve still the memory of 
their gods. Wednesday is the day sacred to Woden, 



THE HOME-MAKING 



5 



the head of their mythology and the ancestor of their 
kings ; Thor, the god of thunder and storm, is remem- 
bered in Thursday : Frig's name appears in Friday ; 
while Tuesday takes the name of Tiw, the god of 
darkness and death. Prominent in their mythology is 
Wyrd, the genius of fate : " Goes ever Wyrd as it 
will," declares the hero of the epic Beowulf. Yet, 
pagans though they were, savage to cruelty in feud 
and war, boastful of speech, heavy eaters and deep 
drinkers, our Teutonic forefathers were at the same 
time a sturdy, healthful race, maintaining customs that 
were honest and wholesome, morally sound, and in 
many ways superior to the more cultured peoples of 
southern Europe. 

As we have seen, the Jutes populated the eastern 
county of Kent ; they also established settle- The Home- 
ments here and there on the southern coast. Making. 
The Angles settled in the country north of that occu- 
pied by the Jutes, and built up a great kingdom known 
as East Angiia, a division of which into Northfolk and 
Southfolk is still indicated in the shires of Norfolk and 
Suffolk ; still farther north did this English conquest 
move, until even Northumbria was under the English 
power. Meanwhile the Saxons had not lagged behind 
their neighbors in the conquest of the island. Succes- 
sive migrations of this people had already won more 
than a foothold upon the southern shore, and different 
divisions of the tribe shared in the possession of this 
part of South Britain. East Saxons ruled the district 
lying between Kent and Suffolk, which is now called 
Essex; to the south of them lay the domain of the 
South Saxons, who have left their name in Sussex; 
while the more powerful kindred of the West Saxons 
covered the territory as far west as Cornwall, and won 
in time the dominion of all South England, establish- 



6 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



ing tlie great kingdom of Wessex. Tlius the history 
of Britain from the beginning of the fifth century to 
the beginning of the seventh is a confused and bloody 
chronicle of invasion and conquest. The Celtic race — 
that portion of it which was not absorbed by intermin- 
gling with the invaders — was enslaved or driven toward 
the west and north ; those who found an abiding place 
among the mountains of the west were given by their. 
Teuton conquerors the name of Welsh^ or strangers. 
At the beginning of the ninth century there were four 
principal divisions of the English people ; there were 
(1) the English of the north, covering the whole of 
Northumberland, and (2) the English of East Anglia 
in Norfolk and Suffolk ; Kent was fairly included 
within the borders of (3) the West Saxons, while (4) 
the central division of the island, also Anglian, sur- 
rounded on three sides by these other kingdoms, and 
on the west by the Welsh, was known as Mercia, the 
country of the March, or the border. 

During the ninth century a new spoiler appeared on 
the English coasts. The Danes began their forays on 
these earlier invaders, and the English peoples, who 
for two hundred years had been contending among 
themselves for leadership, were finally united into one 
nation under Ecgberht, King of the West Saxons, and 
still more securely under the great King Alfred (871- 
901) through the force of a common peril and common 
need. 

These long centuries of conquest and adjustment in 
the history of these related German tribes may be 
designated as the Anglo-Saxon Period ; it extends from 
the arrival of Hengest and Horsa in 449 to the inva- 
sion of the Normans under William in 1066, and thus 
covers the space of a little more than six hundred 
years. 



A i e 2 C D 




A 4 B Longitude West 2 from Greenwich CO D 



8 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



II. ANGLO-SAXON POETRY. 

These fair-skinned, blue-eyed English folk were, 

from the first, lovers of sons: and story. The 
The Scop. . . . ° 

very relics of their earliest art preserve the 

scene and spirit of their recreation. Fierce in fight, 
often merciless in the pursuit of a conquered foe, they 
loved the gleam of their own hearth-fire and the coarse 
comfort of the great Saxon hall, with its heavy tables 
and crowded benches. Here at night the troop gath- 
ered, carousing, in some interval of peace. The earl 
himself, at the high table set crosswise at one end of 
the huge hall, had before him his noisy band of vassals 
thronging the mead-benches. The blaze of the hearth- 
fire in their midst lights up the faces of these ruddy, 
strong-limbed warriors ; it flashes on spear and axe, 
and is reflected from the armor, curiously woven of 
link- mail, which grotesquely decorates the walls, half 
hidden by shaggy skins of wolf and bear. The noisy 
feasting is followed by a lull. The harp appears. 
Perhaps the lord of the household himself receives it, 
and in vigorous tones chants in time with the twanging 
chords some epic of his ancestors, or boasts of his own 
fierce deeds. Perhaps the instrument is passed from 
hand to hand while thane after thane unlocks the 
" word-hoard " of his memory as he may. But most 
frequently it is the professional scop, or gleeman, who 
strikes the rhythmic notes, and takes up the burden of 
the tale ; he has a seat of honor near his lord ; to him 
the rough audience listens spellbound ; he sways their 
wild spirits at his will. 

" There was chant and harp-clang- together 
In presence of Healfdene's battle-scarred heroes. 
The g-lee-wood was welcomed, tales oft recounted 
When Hrothgar's scop, delight of the dwelling 
After the mead-bout, took up the telling-. 



WIDSITH AND DEOR 



9 



The song' was sung out 
The gleeman's tale ended. Spirits soared high 
Carousing reechoed." ^ 

Widsith^ or Far-farer, may have been the name of 
such a singer, whose fame is preserved in widsith 
what is apparently the very oldest of Old Eng- 
lish poems extant. It is preserved in the so-called 
Exeter Book^ a priceless volume of Anglo-Saxon man- 
uscript, presented to the Cathedral at Exeter by 
Bishop Leofric (1046-73), still in the possession of 
the cathedral. Sometimes called The Scop^ or The 
Traveller's Song, this ancient poem catalogues the 
wanderings of the gleeman. 

" Widsith unlocked his word-hoard ; and then spake 
He among men whose travel over earth 
Was farthest through the tribes and through the folks : 
Treasure to be remembered came to him 
Often in hall. 

Among the Myrgings, nobles gave him berth. 

In his first journey he, with Ealhhild, 

The pure peace-maker, sought the fierce king's home, 

Eastward of Ongle, home of Eormanric, 

The wrathful treaty-breaker." ^ 

Hermanric, the great king of the Goths, died before 
the close of the fourth century ; and if Widsith told 
his own story, as parts of the poem indicate, we have 
here a composition dating from the period before the 
migration, although the long catalogue of kings and 
heroes contains some names which mark a later gener- 
ation and prove the interpolation of a later hand. 

" Thus wandering, they who shape songs for men 
Pass over many lands, and tell their need, 
And speak their thanks, and ever, south or north, 
Meet some one skilled in songs and free in gifts. 
Who would be raised among his friends to fame 
And do brave deeds till light and life are gone. 

1 Beowulf, 11. 1063-1067, 1159-1161. 

2 Morley's translation, English Writers, vol. ii. 



10 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



He who has thus wrought himself praise shall have 
A settled glory underneath the stars." ^ 

So Widsith concludes. A companion poem, dating 
apparently from the same early period, presents the 
scop in a more melancholy mood. This is Deors La- 
ment^ the composition of some singer who has felt 
more of the bitterness of life, having been superseded 
in the favor of his lord by some cleverer scop, and now 
lingers late on earth after most of his comrades and 
patrons have gone. 

" Whilom was I Scop of the Heodenings : 
Dear unto my lord ! Deor was my name. 
Well my service was to me many winters through ; 
Loving was my lord ; till at last Heorrenda — 
Skilled in song the man ! — seized upon my land-right 
That the guard of Earls granted erst to me. 
That, one overwent ; this, also may I." ^ 

But by far the most interesting and impressive ex- 
ample of early English art is found in our 
great Anglo-Saxon epic, three thousand lines 
in length, which preserves out of the distant past the 
mythical career of Beowulf, prince of the Geats. The 
form of the epic as we know it appears to have been 
the work of a Northumbrian poet in either the eighth 
or ninth century. It embodies various legends re- 
ported in earlier songs, the first of which were undoubt- 
edly composed on the Continent, probably by poets of 
Angle-land. An interesting feature of this final ver- 
sion, which possesses the unity of the genuine epic along 
with the other characteristics of such compositions, is 
that it represents the work of a Christian writer who 
has sought to modify the paganism of its earlier narra- 
tive by injecting something of the religious spirit of 
his own time into the grim mythology of the older lay. 

1 Morley, English Writers, vol. ii. 

2 Stopford Brooke, History of Early English Literature. 



BEOWULF 



11 



The title of the poem repeats the name of its hero. 
Beowulf is a typical champion, endowed with super- 
human strength, sagacity, courage, and endurance ; 
moreover, in common with the heroes of this type, he 
is foreordained to relieve the ills of those who have 
great need, and is always ready to respond to their 
necessity. The story is this : — 

Hrothgar, the Dane, far-famed for his victories, for 
his justice and generosity no less, grown old ^j^^^^j^ 
in years, builds for his warriors a great mead- 
hall. There the gray-haired chieftain assembles his 
vassals for feasting and mirth ; but an unheard-of hor- 
ror comes upon Heorot, great " hall of the hart," which 
Hrothgar has built. Out from the fens, when night 
falls, stealthily creeps the bog-monster Grendel; en- 
ters the new house where the earls after carousal lie 
asleep on the benches. One and another and another 
of Hrothgar's men is attacked and devoured by the 
demon ; night after night Grendel devastates the mead- 
hall. No one of Hrothgar's thanes is brave enough or 
strong enough to cope with the monster. Heorot is 
deserted, and the old chief sits gloomily in his former 
home to mourn in silence the loss of men and of honor. 
Up in the Northland Hygelac's thane, Beowulf, young, 
bold, robust, already famous for a daring feat in swim- 
ming, and destined to be Hygelac's heir and successor, 
hears of Hrothgar's plight and of Grendel. Soon, with 
a band of chosen men, Beowulf travels southward, fol- 
lows " the whale-path," " the swan-road," until his ship 
strikes the shore of Hrothgar's kingdom. The coast- 
guard, first descried sitting his horse like a statue, gal- 
lops to meet the strangers and challenges their landing. 
Beowulf is conducted to Hrothgar and declares his 
purpose to kill the monster and free the land. Gladly 
does the Dane listen and generous welcome does he 



12 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



make for the Northmen. Night comes, and once more 
is Heorot ablaze with the light of the hearth-fire and 
noisy with the merriment of revel. Wassail is drunk, 
tales are told, bold boasts are made ; but hardly have 
the shouts died away, and the revelers disposed them- 
selves to sleep on the benches, when the fearful fen- 
dragon approaches : he has heard the noise of feasting 
from afar, and now he steals toward the hall, laughing 
as he thinks of his prey. The fire has died out ; the 
hall is in darkness. One of Hrothgar's men is seized 
and devoured. Raging, with lust for flesh aroused, 
Grendel grasps another in his claws ; but it is the hero 
whom the bog-monster has unwittingly caught, and now 
Beowulf, roused for vengeance, starts up to battle with 
Grendel. Unarmed, the hero grapples with his enemy. 
The hall sways with the shock of the fighting. He 
clutches Grendel by the wrist ; never had the monster 
felt a grasp like that. The muscles ache, the cords of 
the demon's arms are snapping, the shoulder is torn 
from the socket ; the weary marsh-dweller gropes his 
way blindly forth, and weakly wends toward his foul 
home in the swamp-land. Grendel is wounded to the 
death. Beowulf rests after victory, and shows the hid- 
eous claw, his war trophy, to the Danes. Great joy 
comes to Hrothgar with the dawn, but with the night 
woe returns. Grendel's mother now issues from the 
death-breeding marshes, and invades the hall of Heorot. 
Once more there_ is wailing among the thanes, once 
more sorrow sits in Hrothgar's house ; but once again 
Beowulf girds himself for battle. With his faithful 
followers, the hero now invades the fatal fen-land it- 
self ; he stands upon the shore of the mist-covered in- 
let where the marsh-demons breed. Strange and loath- 
some shapes appear, half shrouded in fog ; nixies and 
water-sprites laugh exultant, with monstrous eyes glar- 



BEOWULF 



13 



ing at the hero from the cloudy waves of the mere. 
Here Beowulf equips himself, puts on his best corselet, 
grasps the strongest brand ; then he enters the dark 
water, presses down through the flood, beset by the 
sea-monsters, bruised by their shasp tusks, undaunted, 
down, down to the dwelling of the monsters, where the 
fierce she-demon waits. Meanwhile his men keep 
watch and ward above ; gloom settles on them ; doubt 
fills their hearts with dread. The day drags by ; no 
sight of their hero. Still they wait, and silent stare 
on the sea. Now a commotion stirs the thick water ; 
the surface boils under the mists ; blood rolls up red 
through the foam, and Beowulf's men yield to grief 
and despair. But soon the grief gives way to glad- 
ness, for the hero himself emerges from the horrible 
flood, bringing news of the she-demon's slaughter and 
a new trophy, Grendel's head ; this it was that sent 
the red blood welling up through the mere depths when 
Beowulf smote Grendel's dead body. Loud is the re- 
joicing ; triumphantly do the Northmen give the Danes 
warning of their home-coming. Rich are the gifts be- 
stowed by Hrothgar ; great is the feasting. Then Beo- 
wulf's followers remember the home-land ; the " slip- 
pery sea-rover " is launched, the warriors embark with 
their presents, Beowulf says farewell to Hrothgar, and 
steers north to Hygelac's kingdom. 

Beowulf achieves another adventure. Now he is old : 
as Hygelac's successor, fifty winters he has ruled well 
and wisely ; his land has prospered, but an enemy now 
destroys his men, and by night the land is laid waste. 
This time it is a fire-drake with which Beowulf must 
battle ; and the hero goes forth, dauntless as ever, to 
meet the monster. But now his men prove cowards ; 
the hero is left alone to fight with the dragon, — alone 
but for Wiglaf , who stands behind his lord's shield and 



14 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



helps as he may. Long they fight, monster and man ; 
this is no Grendel, this fire-spurter. The fierce heat 
shrivels up the shield, the heroes are hard pressed ; but 
at last Wiglaf disables the dragon, Beowulf gives the 
deathblow. But Beowulf, too, has been hurt and, 
though victor, lies sick of his death- wound. Then 
Wiglaf brings forth the hoard from the cave where the 
worm had so long guarded it, and Beowulf feasts his 
eyes ere they close upon the vast treasure he bequeaths 
to his people. The hero is dead : rear his funeral 
pyre ! Upon the tall promontory, a beacon to sailors, 
friends burn the body ; and the smoky flames bear the 
hero's soul upward. 

Such are the stories that children usually delight in ; 
thus in the childhood of our race was this 

Signifi- 
cance ol tale told. Perhaps under the mists of their 
the Epic. swampy, sea-swept land, the rush of the storm 
and the more subtle attacks of malarious fevers may be 
grotesquely and fancifully shadowed forth, evaded only 
by the courage and wisdom of some hero who builds 
the dikes or drains the marshes ; but after all the main 
fact is that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers approved the 
qualities idealized in this hero of the epic, and honored 
in him the stout-hearted men of their race who con- 
tended not only with flesh and blood, but with those 
mysterious hosts, those uncanny powers of sea and air, 
whose existence they assumed, but whose nature and 
form lay hidden in the darkness of fog and night. The 
poem of Beowulf supplies many vivid picturings of 
early English life and manners ; the hero of the poem 
is really the idealization of the Anglo-Saxon himself. 
That there is an historical basis for the myth is hardly 
to be doubted. The name of Hygelac is identified 
with that of Cochilaicus (a northern chieftain who was 
slain in battle about the year 520). In the latter part 



etm 1itt{if huliw Isjt^n^ ^ene-^i^-rcp' 
^l^^e- selim ]ia^ion* p^ujj '^^ap^ 

<LpiCf pif e::^ pop pp dtiajzen mtcet 



REDUCED FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF BEOWULF MANUSCBIPT IN THE 
BRITISH MUSEUM 



16 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



of the poem there is evidently a mingling of the story 
with the myth of Siegfried and the dragon of the 
Khinegold, Faffner. Of the feats ascribed to Beowulf, 
the account of a remarkable swimming match described 
in the poem may easily be based on fact, and the inci- 
dent of the hand-to-hand struggle with sea-monsters 
and the plunge downward to the submarine cave is not 
so wholly incredible as it might seem. 

There is but a single manuscript of the Beowulf 
poem, greatly damaged by fire and age, now 
Metrical preserved in the British Museum. There are 
Form. 3180 lines in the poem, and it is worth while 
to examine its form somewhat in detail. The epic be- 
gins thus : — 



" Hwset ! we Gar-Dena 
Jjeod-cyninga, 
hu ]7a seSeliiigas 
Oft Scyld Scefing 
moneg-um msegj^um 
(egsode eorl), 
f ea-sceaf t f unden ; 
weox under wolcnura, 
oS ]>9st him aeg-hwylc 
of er hron-rade 
gomban gyldan 

" Lo ! we of the Spear-Danes 
Of warrior kings 
How the princes 
Oft Scyld, son of Scef , 
From many kindreds, 
The Earl inspired terror 
Helpless, a waifling ; 
Waxed under the welkin, 
Until to him each 
Over the whale-road 
Tribute paid : 



in gear-dagum 
J>rym gefrunon, 
ellen fremedon. 
scea)?ena ]?reatum, 
meodo-setla ofteah. 
SySSan serest wearS 
he ]>sss frofre gebad, 
weorS-myndum ]>ah., 
]?ara ymb-sittendra 
hyran scolde, 
]?aet wffis god cyning ! " 

in days of yore 

the fame have heard ; 

mighty deeds wrought. 

from hosts of foes, 

the mead-benches took ; 

after first he was found 

he for that comfort found later, 

in honors throve. 

of those dwelling around him 

obedience gave, 

that was a goodly king ! " 



Then follows the genealogy of Hrothgar, builder of 
Heorot and victim of Grendel's rage. 



ANGLO-SAXON VERSE 



17 



The characteristic structure of Anglo-Saxon verse is 
illustrated in the passage given. The composition is 
metrical, although the number of syllables in one verse 
may vary from that in another. While there is no 
end-rhyme in these verses, there is a recurrence of con- 
sonants which forms a rhyme in the body of the verse ; 
this repetition of initial sounds is called alliteration, 
and this is the most conspicuous feature of Anglo- 
Saxon poetry. The common type of verse is found in 
lines 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, where two syllables alliterating in 
the first half-verse are followed by one such in the 
second. The alliteration is a mark of emphasis always, 
but the position of these emphatic syllables is not uni- 
form. Sometimes, as in lines 2, 10, a single syllable in 
the first half-verse alliterates with one in the second ; 
such a double correspondence as occurs in line 1 is 
rare. In lines 3, 6, 9 vowel alliteration occurs, and 
this does not require that the vowels shall be the same. 
Read or chanted by the gleeman, a pronounced rhythm 
was imparted to the lines, emphasized by the pauses 
and the accents, which were strongly marked. Kecited 
thus with resonant tones to the rhythmical twang of 
the harp-cord, this which seems so rude and hoarse 
became a vigorous, not unmelodious song. 

The most striking characteristic of Anglo-Saxon 
poetry is the rough vigor, the intense energy, 
of its homely but effective style. There is spirit 
virile strength and power in its movement, its ^^°J^® 
emphasis, imagery, and theme. If one reads Saxon 
these ancient memorials of our forefathers 
intelligently and in a mood sympathetic with their 
half -wild, half -cultured spirit, he will be captivated by 
the sweep and power of their verse. The imagery of 
the early gleemen is rich in metaphors, metonymy, and 
personification. The ocean is poetically termed the 



18 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



" whale-path," the " swan-road ; " the ship is described 
as the " wave-traverser," the " floater, foamy-necked, 
like to some sea-fowl ; " ^ the gleeman's repertory is 
his " word-hoard ; " the sun becomes " God's bright 
candle," " heaven's gem ; " swords " bite," the war-horn 
" sings ; " Hrothgar is called the " helm " of the Scyld- 
ings. In descriptive passages the poet loved to let his 
fancy play about his theme, reintroducing the idea, but 
turning his phrase to let light fall upon it from some 
other side. Thus, in describing the hero's preparation 
for his encounter with the sea-wife, the poet says : — 

" Beowulf girded him, 
Wore his war-armor ; not for life was he anxious. 
The linked coat of mail, the hand-woven corselet 
Broad and gold-embossed, should breast the deep currents ; 
That which the bone-chamber well should protect, 
That his breast by the battle-grip might not be bruised, 
The attack of the terror bring scath to his body. 
But the white-shining helmet guarded his head ; 
This mid the mere-depths with sea-waves should mingle, 
With treasure adorned should dart through the surges, 
Encircled with gems, as in days that are bygone 
The weapon-smith wrought it, wondrously worked it, 
A boar's crest above it that never thereafter 
Brand might it bite or battle-sword harm it." ^ 

Naturally enough these early English poets were in- 
spired by the deeds of warriors, and their work is full 
not only of battle scenes, but also of the imagery of 
war. In nature they were impressed by the elemen- 
tal phenomena of storm and climate, — the descent of 
winter, the birth of spring. As they delighted in the 
narrative of conflict, so they loved to picture man's 
struggle with the sea and to sing of the ocean in all its 
varying moods : — 

1 Beowulf, 1. 218. 

^ Ihid. 11. 1441-1454. Compare also the parallelisms in Csedmon's 
hymn, p. 22. 



CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS 



19 



■' The wild rise of the waves, 
The close watch of nig-ht 
At the dark prow in danger 
Of dashing" on rock. 



The wide joy of waters 
The whirl of salt spray. 

There is no man among us 
So proud in his mind. 
Nor so g-ood in his g"ifts, 
Nor so gay in his youth, 
Nor so daring" in deeds, 
Nor so dear to his lord 
That his soul never stirred 
At the thought of sea-faring." ^ 

The reestablislimeDt of Christianity in Britain intro- 
duced a new epoch in English life and litera- The Con- 
ture. While among the native Cymri there 
were many who had adopted the Christian Saxons, 
religion, largely through the ministration of Irish 
missionaries, the Anglo-Saxons themselves continued 
in the worship of Woden and Thor, and in many parts 
of England the older native paganism of the Druids 
was still maintained. But in the year 597 Augustine, 
the Apostle to the Saxons as he was called, sent from 
Rome by Pope Gregory L, landed on that little isle 
of Thanet, where a hundred and fifty years earlier 
Hengest and Horsa had gained their first foothold on 
the British coast ; by the end of the year this mission- 
ary had baptized ten thousand Saxon converts. He was 
consecrated archbishop, founded the Cathedral church 
at Canterbury, and died there in 604. Under the 
teaching of Paulinus, Aidan, and others, Northumbria 
was gradually won for the faith.^ Communities of 

1 The Seafarer. Morley's translation, English Writers, vol, ii. 

2 Several interesting traditions of the conversion of Edwin's folk and 
the parable of the sparrow are pleasantly told by Wordsworth, Ecclesi- 
astical Sonnets, xiii., xiv., xv., xvi. 




20 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



devotees, where both men and women piously inclined 
gathered for religious fellowship and a consecrated 
life, were established, and in time became seats of 
learning as well as centres of religious zeal. Very- 
ancient was the famous community of monks estab- 
lished by Columba, the Irish exile, on the island of 
lona, off the western coast of Scotland ; in a sense 
lona was the mother of the new religious settlement at 
Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, on the bleak Northum- 
brian coast, where Aidan placed his seat. In 657, at 
Whitby, on the Yorkshire cliffs overlooking the North 
Sea, Hilda founded her community of Streoneshalh. 
In 673 a band of monks settled at Ely, in Cambridge- 
shire. Peterborough began the building of its great 
abbey about ten years later, and Jarrow, ever associ- 
ated with the fame of Bede, had its beginning at about 
this time. With the growth of Christian sentiment a 
new spirit appears in Anglo-Saxon literature. Old 
motives are curiously adapted to the new ends. The 
glory of conflict still occupies the mind of the poet, 
warfare and bloodshed are still described, but the ma- 
terial is drawn from Hebrew history, or from the lives 
of saints and martyrs. The old fatalism of the Teu- 
tons is greatly modified, and the melancholy of the 
pagan gives place to the Christian's hopefulness and 
faith. Thus, in a long religions poem of the eighth 
century, we find passages like this : — 

" I have heard the fame of a land far hence ; 
Eastward it lies, loveliest of lands 
Known among men. Not easy of access 
To many earth-dwellers, who this mid-region traverse, 
Is this favored retreat, but far is it removed 
Through the Creator's might from ill-minded men. 
Fair are its fields, full of delights ; 
Fragrant with fairest odors of earth. 
There is no land like this land ; marvelous its Maker, 
Proud, rich in power, he who thus planned it ! 



C^DMON 



21 



There is oft granted to the blessed together 

Harmonies g-lorious. Heaven's gates flung wide open. 

That is a winsome land ; wide wave its forests 

Green neath the sky. Nor may there rain nor snow, 

Neither frost's bite nor fire's blast. 

Neither hail's dart nor hoar-frost's blight, 

Neither blazing heat nor bitter cold, 

Neither hot wind, nor winter storm 

Work wrong to any ; but this wonder-land 

Seemeth blessed and blissful, a-blossom with bloom," ^ 

With the first appearance of this new motive in our 
literature, we make acquaintance with the 
personality of our first native English poet mon, died 
whose name is preserved, — the humble singer 
whose interesting story has been told by Baeda, or 
Bede, in his Historia Ecclesiastica^ compiled within 
some sixty years of this singer's death. According to 
Bede, there was living at the Monastery of Streones- 
halh, at Whitby, in the time of the Abbess Hilda, who 
died in 680, a lay brother by the name of C^dmon. 
This man was of mature age, unlearned, and engaged 
on common menial tasks. Without skill in song or 
improvisation, Caedmon was compelled to keep silence 
when the harp passed from hand to hand at the even- 
ing merry-makings, where each was expected to assist 
in the general entertainment. Sometimes, says Bede, 
when he saw the harp coming near him he rose from 
the table and silently slipped away. One evening 
thus he betook himself to the stables, the care of 
the cattle having been for that night assigned to him. 
Here he slept, and as he slept some one stood by him 
and saluted him, calling him by name : " Caedmon," 
said he, " sing me something ! " But he replied, " I 
know not how to sing ; since for that very reason I 
have left the company, because I cannot sing." And 

1 The Phoenix. II. 1-20 ; attributed to Cynewulf. The first part of 
this poem is a paraphrase of a Latin original. 



22 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



the one who talked with him said : " Nevertheless you 
shall sing to me." "What shall I sing?" he asked. 
Then that one replied : " Sing the beginning of cre- 
ated things." Then Caedmon arose and sang in praise 
of God the Creator verses of which this is the sense : 
" Now we ought to praise the Author of the Heavenly 
kingdom, the power of the Creator, and his counsel, 
the deeds of the Father of Glory. How He, the 
Eternal God, of all wonders the Author became ; who 
first for' the children of men created Heaven for a 
roof, then the earth. Guardian of the human race, the 
Almighty." This is the sense, says Bede, but not the 
order of the words which he sang.^ 

This was the vision; in the morning Caedmon re- 
Cadmon's membered his dream and was able to recite 
Works. the verses he had uttered while asleep. 
Hilda, the abbess, greatly interested in Caedmon's 

1 This important work of Bede was afterward translated by King- 
Alfred from the Latin into the Anglo-Saxon tongTie (see page 34). 
In the text Alfred incorporated the following version of Caedmon's 
hymn, which possibly retains in large part the " order " as well as the 
" sense " of the original song. It may at all events serve to illustrate 
further the fashion of Anglo-Saxon verse. (Zupitza's reading is used.) 

" Nu sculan herigean heofoHrices weard, 
Meotodes meahte ond his modgethanc, 
Weorc wuldorfaeder, swa he wundra gehwaes, 
Ece drihten, or onstealde. 
He aerest sceop eorthan bearnum 
Heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend : 
Tha middangeard, moncjTines weard, 
Ece drihten, aefter teode 
Firum, foldan, frea selmihtig," 

Translation. 

" Now ought we to worship the Warder of Heaven, 
The might of the Creator and His mighty thought ; 
The work of the glorious Father ; how he of every wonder, 
Eternal Lord, — a beginning made. 
He first created for the children of earth 
Heaven for a roof, — holy Creator ; 
Then the mid-region, — Guardian of mankind ; 
The Eternal Lord afterward established 
For men the earth ; Ruler Almighty." 



CYNEWULF 



23 



story, directed the unlearned man to come daily to 
the monastery, where the monks told him the narra- 
tive of sacred history. " Then Csedmon meditated 
all that he heard and, like a clean animal ruminat- 
ing, turned it into sweetest verse. And his songs 
were so winsome to hear that his teachers themselves 
wrote down his words and learned from him." ^ Then 
Caedmon himself became a monk, and inspired by this 
poetic fire so mysteriously kindled, paraphrased the 
accounts of Genesis and Exodus^ together with many 
other portions of the Scripture narrative. *' Not at all 
from men was it," says Bede, " nor instructed by man, 
that he learned the song-craft ; but he was divinely in- 
spired and by God's gift he received the power of 
song ; therefore he never would compose fanciful or 
idle verses, but only those which pertain to righteous- 
ness, and which it became his pious tongue to sing." 
Many others in England began to write religious poe- 
try after Caedmon's time, but none could compare with 
him. Such was Bede's judgment of this first poet of 
the soil, who sang because he was commanded. Thus 
has it ever been when the unaffected poetry of nature 
has its birth. 

Aside from Csedmon, the only one of the Old Eng- 
lish poets known to us by name is Cynewulf, cynewuu 
a writer of great influence and a poet of gen- ijorn about 
uine power. Yet Cynewulf's actual person- 
ality and the details of his life are so obscured by the 
shadows of a distant past that there is more of con- 
jecture than of certainty in the accepted narrative of 
his career. His work must have fallen about a cen- 
tury after Caedmon's. We are assured that he, too, 
was a Northumbrian. Unlike the older singer of such 
humble origin, Cynewulf was from the first a mover in 

1 King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of Bede's Historia. 



24 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



courtly circles, — in one of his poems he tells us as 
much, — was perhaps of noble lineage, at least a thane 
or a retainer of some high lord. With the experiences 
of the warrior he must have been familiar, for his war- 
scenes are realistic, and the spirit of the soldier speaks 
in the vividness of his narrative. A traveler who 
knew the sea and had been in distant lands, a scholar 
to whom the Latin tongue was familiar, a gentleman 
well-trained in the accomplishments of his time — all 
these Cynewulf seems to have been, withal participat- 
ing freely, as a youth, in the pleasures and excitements 
of a worldly life. He may have been the author of a 
series of one hundred riddles in verse, but this is doubt- 
ful. At least four ambitious works are identified by 
his own autograph as indisputably his. These are the 
Life of St. Juliana^ the Fates of the Apostles^ the 
Elene^f and the Christ. In each of these poems, runes, 
ingeniously inserted in the text, spell out the poet's 
name. In addition to these known works, a Life of 
St. Guthlac, a similar one of Andreas., and a para- 
phrase of a Latin poem by Lactantius entitled The 
Phoenix are with several minor poems also attributed 
to Cynewulf. Of all these the Elene^ the Christy and 
the Phoenix are among the best productions of Anglo- 
Saxon poetry. Cynewulf had turned from his worldly 
life, had possibly become a monk ; at any rate had 
thrown his talent with all his heart and soul into the 
effort to exalt the Christian faith and to sing the glory 
of the Cross. In the Dream of the Pood, certainly 
the composition of this writer, is told the story of a 
vision somewhat like that of Csedmon, in which the 
dreamer sees the sacred tree, glitteriug now with gold 
and jewels, now stained with blood, and speaking of 
the precious fruit it had borne. The singer is bidden 
declare this sight to sinful men and to reveal both 



CYNEWULF'S VERSE 



25 



what has been and what shall be. The Elene narrates 
the story of Helena, mother of Constantine, and her 
finding of the true Cross. In the Christ we find three 
separate poems wherein Cynewulf describes the Advent, 
the Ascension, and the Day of Judgment. The follow- 
ing passage from the second section of this work, be- 
sides illustrating the style of Cynewulf's composition, 
will make clear the poet's use of runes by means of 
which he weaves his own name into the text. The 
words in capitals represent pretty closely the mean- 
ings which these single characters commonly represent. 

" Then shall the Courageous tremble ; he shall hear 
the King, the Ruler of Heaven, speak stern cynewuii's 
words unto those who in time past ill obeyed Verse. 
Him on earth, while as yet they could easily find com- 
fort for their Yearning and their Need. There in 
that place shall many a one, weary and sore afraid, 
await what dire punishment He will mete out to them 
for their deeds. Gone is the Winsomeness of earth's 
adornments. Long ago the portion of Life's joys 
granted Us was compassed about by Lake-floods, our 
Fortune on the earth. Then shall our treasures burn 
in fire ; bright and swift shall the red flame rage ; 
fiercely shall it rush through the wide world. Plains 
shall perish, citadels fall. The fire shall be all astir ; 
pitilessly shall that greediest of spirits waste the ancient 
treasure which men held of old, whilst pride abode 
with them upon the earth." ^ 

Although too subjective to be classified as epics, the 
religious poems of Cynewulf are most characteristic as 
well as most impressive in those passages which intro- 
duce the themes of action. Highly suggestive are these 
lines from the Elene which describe the voyage of 

1 From The Christ of Cynewulf translated into Eng-lish prose by 
C. H. Whitman (Ginn). 



26 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



the queen and lier company on their way to seek the 
Cross. True to his environment and the instincts of 
the Teuton, Cynewulf shares with the many unidenti- 
fied singers among his people the Anglo-Saxon love of 
the sea, is familiar with the experiences of the mariner, 
and has caught the spirit and the tone of the resound- 
ing waves. 

" Gan with speed the crowd of earls 
Hasten to ship. The steeds of the sea 
'Round the shore of the ocean ready were standings 
Cabled sea-horses, at rest on the water. 
Then plainly was known the voyage of the lady, 
"When the welling of waves she sought with her folk. 
There many a proud one at Wendel-sea 
Stood on the shore. They severally hastened 
Over the mark-paths, band after band, 
And then they loaded with battle-sarks, 
With shields and spears, with mail-clad warriors, 
With men and women, the steeds of the sea. 
Then they let o'er the billows the foamy ones go, 
The high wave-rushers. The hull oft received 
O'er the mingling of waters the blows of the waves. 
The sea resounded. Not since nor ere heard I 

[ On water-stream a lady lead, 
On ocean -street, a fairer force. 
There might he see, who that voyage beheld, 
Burst o'er the bath- way, the sea-wood, hasten 
'Neath swelling sails, the sea-horse play, 
The wave-floater sail. The warriors were blithe, 
Courageous in mind ; queen joyed in her journey." ^ 

In addition to the manuscript of Beowulf already 
TheManu- mentioned, our principal source of acquaint- 
scripts. ance with Anglo-Saxon poetry is found in two 
famous collections, known respectively as the Exeter 
Book and the Vercelli Book. The first of these trea- 
sures has been in the library of the cathedral at Exeter 
since the time of Bishop Leofric (1046-73) ; the other 
was discovered in 1822 at the Monastery of Vercelli in 

1 From the Elene, translated by J. M. Garnett (Ginn), 11. 225-247. 



BATTLE NARRATIVES 



27 



Italy by a German student. This latter volume con- 
tains the Andreas, the Elene, tlie Dream of the Hood, 
the Fates of the Apostles (all supposed to be by Cyne- 
wuK), and two Addresses of the Soid to the Body. 
Twenty-two sermons are also included in this volume. 
The Exeter Booh preserves the manuscripts (copies 
made in Leofric's time) of Cynewulf 's Christ, Juliana^ 
and St. Guthlac, also a second St. Guthlac by another 
monkish writer, the Phoenix, ascribed to Cynewulf, 
two shorter poems of great merit, the Wanderer and 
the Seafarer, Widsith, Deor^s Complaint, and several 
minor didactic poems, with a collection of metrical pro- 
verbs. One fragment of verse is of unique interest as 
presenting almost the sole example of anything like 
romantic sentiment in the whole body of Anglo-Saxon 
poetry. 

' ' Dear the welcomed one 
To the Frisian wife, when the Floater 's drawn on shore, 
When his keel comes back, and her churl returns to home, 
Her's, her own food-giver. And she prays him in. 
Washes then his weedy coat, and new weeds puts on him, 
O lythe it is on land to him, whom his love constrains." ^ 

Of an entirely different order from the poetry just 

described are two stirrino- accounts of actual „ , , „ 

® Battle Nar- 

battles, incorporated in the Annals of Win- rativesin 

Chester, which belong in the important prose 

history known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The 

first of these poems describes the Battle of Brunnan- 

burh in the year 937, when King ^thelstan, together 

with his brother Eadmund, " won life-long fame with 

the edges of swords " in battle with the Scots and 

Danes. The poem is especially rich in that vigorous 

imagery peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon gleeman when 

singing of conflict. 

^ Gnomic Verses, translated by Stopford A. Brooke, Early English 
Literature. 



28 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 

" The board-wall^ they battered. 
The linden-wood ^ hewed, with leavings of hammers. 

The field was made fat 
With blood of brave warriors, after sun brightly rose 
At morning-tide, — that marvellous star, 
God's gleaming candle, over ground glided, — 
Until the Creator's noble creation 
Sank to his seat. . . . 



They left then behind them to hold horrid banquet 
That black-feathered bird, horny-beaked, 
The swart raven ; and the gray-coated robber, 
White-feathered behind, to feast on the carrion, 
The greedy war-hawk ; and that gray wanderer, 
The wolf in the wood." 

The poem consists of seventy-three lines ; its compan- 
ion piece, the Song of the Fight of Maldon^ in the 
year 991, is a longer composition, and although incom- 
plete in the text preserved, numbers 325 lines as it 
stands. It recounts the story of the battle and the 
death of Byrhtnoth, an East Saxon ealdorman in the 
time of ^thelred " the Unready." 

While not all the extant productions of scop and 
Epic Frag- gleeman are recorded in this volume, there 
ments. ^iVQ three important fragments which should 
be mentioned. These are Waldhere, The Fight at Fin- 
nesburg^ and Judith. Of the first of these we have 
but a portion, sixty-two lines in length ; the manuscript 
apparently belongs to the eighth century, and is evi- 
dently a copy of a distinctly German epic known and 
sung by the English. The story of Finn and the de- 
struction of his stronghold is as truly an English epic 
as is the Beowulf itself ; indeed, the fragment of some 
fifty verses is supplemented by a narrative of a hun- 
dred lines introduced in Beowulf as the song of 

1 By both these terms the shields are described ; the leavings of 
hammers are the swords, beaten into shape and tempered by the smith. 



ANGLO-SAXON PROSE — BEDE 29 



Hrothgar's scop. Judith^ of which three spirited can- 
tos are preserved, was one of the great epic composi- 
tions of our early literature. It has been unnecessarily 
attributed to Cynewulf, but belongs to a later genera- 
tion. It contains the apocryphal history of Judith 
and Holofernes. 

III. ANGLO-SAXON PROSE. 

The earliest monuments of our literature we have 
found to be in verse. This happens natu- verse pre- 
rally. In the first place, compositions which as^^ Liter-^ 
are to be preserved by tradition rather than aryForm. 
by letter, either printed or written, will be more easily 
retained and transmitted in metrical form. Secondly, 
in a society which honors the profession of the bard, 
the rhythm and ornament of verse are a welcome fea- 
ture of the recitation. But most important of all is 
the historical fact that in the childhood of any people, 
poetry is the more natural, almost the spontaneous 
form adopted by those who are moved to express 
thought or emotion with any effort toward artistic ef- 
fect. Such utterance comes in moments of exaltation, 
unpremeditated. In these moods men become poets 
in spite of themselves. Prose composition is a later 
and more labored development. 

The earliest Anglo-Saxon prose of any literary 
value seems to have been a single work of Bede, 673- 
the learned and pious Northumbrian monk, 735. 
Baeda, or Bede, to whose name the title of "Vener- 
able " was affectionately added by the pupil who cut 
the epitaph above his master's grave at Durham. Bede 
was born near Wearmouth, on the Durham coast. An 
orphan, seven years old, he entered the monastery of 
St. Peter's to study for the priesthood, and two or three 
years later removed to the associated monastery of St. 



30 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



Paul's at Jarrow, close at hand. Here he remained 
for the rest of his life, devoted to his study and the 
composition of his numerous works in Latin. Jarrow 
possessed at this time one of the best libraries in Eu- 
rope, and Bede himself was famous over Christendom 
for his learning and his books. Six hundred pupils 
listened to the instruction of this scholar and assisted 
him in his work. He wrote books on grammar, mathe- 
matics, and natural science, commentaries on the 
Scriptures, lives of the saints, church history, treatises 
on philosophy, and, besides other works, made metrical 
versions of the Psalms. I wholly applied myself to 
the study of Scripture," says Bede, " and amidst the 
observance of regular discipline, and the daily care of 
singing in the church, I always took delight in learn- 
ing, teaching, and writing." His most important work 
is the Historia Ecclesiastica^ an ecclesiastical or church 
history of Britain. It is here that we find the account 
of Csedmon and his dream. But the forty-odd Latin 
works of this pious scholar are not the occasion of so 
much interest as is the single text, unhappily lost, pro- 
duced by Bede in his own vernacular, — a translation 
of the Gospel of St. Jolin. This was Bede's last 
work ; coincidently with its completion came his death. 
One of the brothers in the monastery, Cuthbert, rever- 
ently records the manner of the end. " He passed the 
day joyfully till the evening, when his scribe said, 
' Dear master, there is yet one sentence not written.' 
He answered, ' Write quickly.' Soon after, the boy 
said, ' The sentence is now written.' He replied, ' It 
is well ; you have said the truth. It is ended.' And 
soon thereafter he breathed his last." 

In the time of Bede, and for a century thereafter, 
Scholarship Anglo-Saxon scholarship was preeminent in 
In England. Europe. The English monasteries were many 



KING ALFRED 



31 



of them famous for their libraries of manuscripts, and 
as resorts for scholastic training. Bede's Latin treat- 
ises were copied by hundreds, and were employed as 
text-books in the monastic schools of Italy and France. 
Alcuin, who accepted in 782 the invitation of Charle- 
magne to take charge of the Palace School, estab- 
lished by the great king of all the Franks, was first a 
studious monk in the school of the monastery at York, 
and then a noted teacher in that community. He 
was a pupil of Egbert, Archbishop of York, who had 
founded an excellent school at the suggestion of Bede 
himself, and like the venerable scholar of Jarrow en- 
tered the monastery in childhood perhaps under sim- 
ilar circumstances. The record of Alcuin's career 
places him in the period immediately following that 
of Bede, and the date of that great teacher's death, 
735, has even been suggested as the probable date of 
Alcuin's birth. In the next century another English 
scholar, of either Welsh or Irish birth, John Scotus Eri- 
gena, occupied at the court of Charles the Bald a posi- 
tion similar to the one maintained by Alcuin at the 
court of Charlemagne. 

In the latter part of the ninth century began those 
formidable incursions of the Danes which Alfred, 
continued through several generations, the 8^8-901. 
most grievous affliction ever visited upon the Anglo- 
Saxon kin. As they pillaged and harried the north 
country, learning and culture died or fled before them. 
Whitby and Jarrow, with the other monasteries of the 
north, were relentlessly destroyed, and the literary su- 
premacy of Northumberland w^as naturally at an end. 
Now, for almost the first time, the south kingdom of 
the Saxons finds a place in the records of our literature, 
and now the name of Alfred, or Alfred, " England's 
Comfort," "England's Darling," as he was lovingly 



32 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



called by those who knew what he wrought, becomes 
prominently associated with the development of our 
English speech and the beginnings of our English 
prose. His courageous defense of his people against 
an almost irresistible onset, and the difficult achieve- 
ment of uniting a disordered folk into an actual nation, 
were perhaps the most conspicuous among his many 
services to his race ; the value of his labors in establish- 
ing and in reforming the Church should not be over- 
looked ; but in his wise and vigorous efforts to instruct 
his people, and to encourage learning throughout the 
land, Alfred revealed his sagacity as well as his great- 
ness of character. 

" I have often recalled," says Alfred in his preface 
His Love of til® translation of Gregory's Pastoral 
Learning. Care^ " what learned men there were in Eng- 
land formerly, both theologians and teachers of secular 
learning; and what happy times those were in Eng- 
land . . . and also how eager the clergy were to teach 
and study and to discharge all their duties ; and how 
foreigners sought out our island for wisdom and in- 
struction's sake ; and how now we must betake our- 
selves elsewhere if we would possess it. So extreme 
is the case in England now, that there were very few 
south of the Humber who could understand the ritual 
in English, or translate a Latin letter ; and I believe 
that there were not many north of the Humber. So 
few of these were there that I do not think there was 
a single one south of the Thames (i. e. in Wessex) 
who could do it when I came to the throne. God be 
thanked that we now have some beginning of learning 
among us, and therefore I command that thou use — 
as I believe thou wilt — thy authority in this as often 
as thou mayest, and that thou impart the wisdom God 
hath given thee whenever thou hast opportunity. . . . 



ALFRED'S TRANSLATIONS 



33 



Therefore I think it well, if thou thinkest as I do, 
that we take those books which there is most need all 
men should know, and turn them into the speech which 
we all understand, and so bring it about, as we may 
with God's grace, if we have peace, that all the youth 
now in England, free men, that have property, may 
apply themselves uninterruptedly to learning, — so 
long as they take up no other occupation or employ- 
ment, — until they are able to read English with ease. 
. . . Thus I began, among the various and manifold 
duties of this kingdom, to translate into English the 
book which is called in Latin Pastoralis^ or Shep- 
herd'' s Booh in English, sometimes word for word, 
sometimes meaning for meaning, just as I learned of 
Plegmund, my archbishop, and of Asser, my bishop, 
and of Grimbold, my masspriest, and of John, my mass- 
priest. After I had studied so that I understood, and 
could get at the true meaning, I translated this work 
into English; and to every bishop's see in my king- 
dom I will send a copy." 

In no half-hearted way did the king execute this 
self-appointed task. He restored the old sys- ^j.^gi^_ 
tem of instruction in the monasteries, turned tionsfrom 
his own court into a school, of which he was 
himself the master, invited scholars of renown to settle 
in his kingdom, and made his capital of Winchester 
the centre of learning and literary activity in Eng- 
land. Not only his interest in literature, but also his 
rare good sense, is shown in the selection of the numer- 
ous works which he caused to be put into the English 
tongue. The Consolations of Philosophy^ an excel- 
lent treatise by Boethius, a consul of Rome in the year 
510, and one who certainly merits all the honor implied 
in his title, " last of the Philosophers ; " a universal 
History by Orosius, a Spanish scholar and a Chris- 



34 THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



tian of the fifth century ; Bede's Ecclesiastical His- 
tory^ and Pope Gregory's Pastoral Care^ are the most 
important of the translations which Alfred caused to 
be made. The mark of his own originality is in them 
all ; here he omits a portion of no particular value to 
his readers, here he adds a passage, sometimes of con- 
siderable length, concerning matters of importance with 
which he is acquainted ; the constant purpose to in- 
struct and benefit his people is everywhere evident. 

From Alfred's schools went forth many scholars who 
became teachers noted in their time. Latin 
955 ?- ' continued to be the language used in literary 
' composition, as it remained in large degree the 
spoken language of the literary class. Near the end of 
the tenth century, however, ^Ifric, Abbot of Ensham, 
following the example of Alfred, wrote in the native 
tongue. His most interesting work is a Latin Gram- 
mar and a Glossary which supplies the equivalents of 
many Anglo-Saxon words. He also wrote a collection of 
Homilies which had wide circulation. Of these there 
were two series, each containing forty discourses, one 
series presenting the lives of saints recognized by the 
Anglo-Saxon Church. A translation of the Pentateuch 
and the book of Joh is included in ^Ifric's works. 

The influence of Alfred the Great appears in very 
The practical form in the compilation of the An- 

Chronicle. glo-Saxon Chronicle. Begun under the di- 
rection of Alfred, the record of previous events in the 
history of Britain, from the period of Roman invasion 
down to his own time, was compiled from the History 
of Bede and the works of other chroniclers. The work 
was then continued contemporaneously down to the 
death of Stephen in 1154. It is supposed that local 
records were kept at the several monasteries in differ- 
ent parts of England, which were sent to some official 



THE NATION 



35 



chronicler who compiled from them a condensed sum- 
mary of the year's events. These terse annals, trust- 
worthy at least in those portions recorded by contem- 
porary writers, picturesque in spite of their brevity, 
plain, unadorned, straightforward, constitute the orig- 
inal authority on early English history, and at the 
same time form our most interesting monument of 
Anglo-Saxon prose. As we have seen, at rare intervals 
the historian assumes the gleeman's character, and ad- 
mits some metrical narrative like those of Brunnan- 
burh and Maldon. For the larger part the Chronicle 
reads like this : — 

" 871. Now came Alfred, son of ^thelwulf, to the 
rule of the West Saxons, and in about one month 
thereafter, JElfred the king fought against the entire 
Danish army with a little force of English at Wilton, 
and for a good part of the day routed them ; yet the 
Danes remained masters of the field. And during this 
year there were nine battles fought with the enemy 
in this kingdom south of the Thames ; besides which 
Alfred, the king's brother, and various aldermen and 
thanes of the king rode on raids, of which no account 
was kept. And during the year there were slain nine 
earls and one king ; and in this year the West Saxons 
made peace with the Danes." 

IV. THE NATION AND THE LANGUAGE. 

Thus far the record of our literary life has dealt 
with the productions of a strongly individual- TheNa- 
ized race. Different divisions of the people 
employed forms that varied in details of pronunciation, 
in grammatical inflection, and to some extent in vocab- 
ulary ; but their language was essentially the same. 
As always happens where a race is divided by sectional 
lines, there were clearly defined dialects distinguishing 



36 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



the people of the north, the people o£ the midland, 
and those of the south ; yet the spirit of a single race 
spoke in the literature of these different sections ; the 
poetry of Northumbria and the prose of Wessex exhib- 
ited the characteristics of a single if not a united folk. 
The literary supremacy of the Angles early fixed the 
use of the word Englisc^ as applied to language and 
literature, and although, when later that supremacy 
passed to the Saxons of Wessex along with the polit- 
ical predominance in the kingdom, all that we possess 
of Northumbrian literature was reproduced in the form 
of speech peculiar to the West Saxons,^ the words 
English and England were accepted by the southern 
folk as identifying their nation and their land. 

The Anglo-Saxon speech had not borrowed much 
The Lan- from foreign sources. A few verbal relics of 
guage. the early Roman occupation have been cited. ^ 
Not many Cymric or Gaelic terms, apparently, were 
thus early introduced ; those now common in our lan- 
guage were almost all absorbed in later association 
with the Scotch, the Irish, and the Welsh. Geo- 
graphical- names do frequently preserve the more 
ancient Celtic form : such are Avon and Esk^ with the 
variant forms of Usk^ Ux^ and Occ, all meaning water, 
occurring in place-names like Exeter, Uxbridge, and 
Oxford ; Avon and Esk appear as the names of rivers 
in different parts of England. Pen (mountain) is 
also common. The suffix comb (hollow, valley) is 
seen in names like Hascombe and Holcomb. Other 
Celtic loan-words found in Anglo-Saxon are down 

1 This fact should be emphasized. All extant manuscripts, except a 
few unimportant records, date from the time of Alfred or later ; our 
texts of Csedmon and his followers, of Cynewulf, and later Northum- 
brian poets, even the single manuscript of Beowulf, are all in West 
Saxon dialect, copies of the originals which disappeared during the 
Danish wars. 

2 See page 3. 



THE LANGUAGE 



37 



(hill), dun (the color), mattoch^ and slough. The con- 
version of the Anglo-Saxons brought a great number of 
Latin ^words, some of them Greek originally, into the 
English. The word church (A.-S. cyrice^ Grk. hyria- 
ho7i)^ together with the large vocabulary connected with 
the officers and functions of the Church, was thus added 
to our language. Such, for example, were the words 
hiscop (L. episcopus)^ munuc (rjionachus)^ preost 
presbyter)^ deofol (^diaholus)^ candel (candela)^ 
mynstre, (monasterium) , martyr (Grk. martyr^ a wit- 
ness), and very many others. From the Danes' speech 
many words found their way into the spoken language ; 
they came more slowly into literary English. The 
endings -thorp^ -thwaite^ -toft^ occurring in many 
names of places like Whitby, Grimsby, Somersby, 
Althorp, Brathwaite, and Lowestoft, have the mean- 
ing of village or town. These names are especially 
numerous in the eastern part of Yorkshire and Lincoln- 
shire, in the region formerly known as the Danelagh^ 
where the Danes had their settlements.^ 

From now on the language of England develops a 
more composite character as a new race, that of the 
Normans, finds a place for itself in this island king- 
dom ; more rapidly than before the English speech 
absorbs important elements from another people, and 
we are brought to a new epoch in the history of Eng- 
lish literature, passing into what is often called the 
Middle English Period. 

The history of early England has been admirably told by 
J. R. Green in his Making o f England, his Con- Book Notes 
quest of England, and his Short History of the ^ggeg.^^ 
English People. Freeman's Old English History tions. 
is an authority, and Sharon Turner's History of the Anglo' 

^ The relations of these various peoples to each other and their com- 
mon descent from the great Aryan stock which peopled the continent 
of Europe is shown in the following table. 



STUDY SUGGESTIONS 



39 



Saxons is particularly useful as a study of life and man- 
ners. 

Ten Brink's History of English Literature, vol. i., Stop- 
ford Brooke's Early English Literature, and the first two 
volumes of Henry Morley's English Writers, are the best 
authorities upon Anglo-Saxon literature. Taine's English 
Literature and Jusserand's Literary History of the Eng- 
lish People have interesting chapters on this period. 

Beginnings of English Literature, by C. M. Lewis (Ginn), 
includes the period covered here. 

Numerous translations of Anglo-Saxon poetry are given 
by both Brooke and Morley. In the English JVriters, vol. 
ii., are Widsith and the Seafarer, entire ; the Seafarer 
and the Wanderer are translated by Brooke in the Notes at 
the end of his volume. Beowulf is accessible in several 
versions, of which that by James M. Garnett (Ginn) is most 
faithful to the spirit of the original. Professor Garnett has 
translated also Cynewulf's Elene and the fragment of Judith, 
together with Brunnanhurh and Maldon, in one volume 
(Ginn). The Christ is at hand in an excellent prose ren- 
dering by Charles H. Whitman (Ginn). Albert S. Cook's 
edition of Judith (Heath) contains a translation of that frag- 
ment. The Battle of Brunnanhurh, too, is found among the 
poems of Tennyson. The Exeter Book has been translated 
by Israel Gollancz (Early English Text Society). 

Bede's account of the poet Caedmon, and Cuthbert's nar- 
rative of the death of Bede, also Alfred's preface to his 
translation of Bede's Cura Pastoralis, will be found trans- 
lated, or paraphrased, by Morley in his English Writers, 
vol. ii. Wulfstan's narrative, incorporated by Alfred in his 
translation of Orosius, is also given by Morley. Bede's 
Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are 
published in translation by Bohn. A Life of Alfred the 
Great, by Thomas Hughes, is published by Houghton, 
Mifflin and Company. 

Students who wish to begin the study of Anglo-Saxon will 
find available text-books in Cook's First Book in Old Eng- 
lish (Ginn), Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader (Holt), Sweet's 



40 



THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 



Anglo-Saxon Primer, and Anglo-Saxon Reader (Clarendon 
Press). Smith's Old English Grammar and Exercise Book 
(Allyn & Bacon) is an excellent introduction to the study. 
A series of important texts is included in the Library of 
Anglo-Saxon Poetry, published by Ginn : I. Beowulf, by 
Harrison and Sharp; II. Exodus and Daniel, by T. W. Hunt ; 
IV. Maldon and Brunnanhurh, by C. L. Crow ; VI. Elene, 
by C. W. Kent. The Albion Series of Anglo-Saxon and 
Middle English Poetry is announced by the same house ; 
Professor A. S. Cook's edition of the Christ has already 
appeared. The Judith, also edited by Cook, is published by 
Heath. Particular attention is directed to the Millennial Se- 
ries of English Classics (Section 1. Old English Literature), 
now in preparation (Heath) , Edward Miles Brown, general 
editor. 

The History of the English Language, by O. F. Emer- 
son (Macmillan), and T. R. Lounsbury's History of the 
English Language (Holt) are valuable books. For general 
study of words. Words and their Ways in English Speech, 
by Greenough and Kittredge (Macmillan), is recommended. 

The development of Anglo-Saxon literature may be traced 
as follows (of course only the most important names and 
titles are included) : — 



Historical Events. 


POETKT. 


Prose. 


Period of Roman occupation 

(a. d. 78-410). 
Coming of Hengest and Horsa 

(449). 

Arrival of Augustine (597). 

Ecgberht, King of Wessex 

(802-39). 
Alfred (871-901). 
Danish kings (1016-42). 

Battle of Hastings (1066). 


Widsith, Deor''s La- 
ment and Beowulf 
(previous to mi- 
gration). 

Caedmon (about 

664). 
Cynewulf (about 

750). 


Bede (673-735). 

Alfred (849-901). 
^Ifric (955- 

1020). 
The Chronicle 

(871-1154). 



CHAPTEE II 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 

FROM THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS TO THE DEATH OF 
CHAUCER 

I. The New Invasion. 
II. The Development of Middle English Literature. 

III. The Age of Chaucer. 

IV. Geoffrey Chaucer : Poet of the Dawn. 

I. THE NEW INVASION. 

When, in 1066, William of Normandy led his vic- 
torious hosts against Harold and his Saxons TheNor- 
at Senlac near Hastings, a new epoch be- 
gan in English history. The Normans, originally 
Teutons like the English themselves, were descendants 
of those Norse pirates, who, under Hrolf, at the be- 
ginning of the tenth century, had overrun the land on 
either side the mouth of the Seine, conquered that ter- 
ritory, and in the course of one hundred and fifty years 
developed the powerful duchy of Normandy. They 
were a bold, keen race, vigorous and aggressive, re- 
markable for their ability in assimilating the desirable 
qualities of the conquered people, and wonderfully suc- 
cessful in imparting their own energy to their new 
subjects. They adopted the modes and laws of the 
feudal system ; they accepted the Christian faith ; they 
were foremost in promoting the courtly rules and man- 
ners of chivalry ; they made themselves at home among 
the Franks, forgot their own Norse speech, and learned 



42 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



the French tongue. The music and literature of France 
impressed them with its softer measures. At the great 
battle which gave England to William, Taillefer the 
Norman minstrel led the vanguard, tossing his sword 
in the air, and chanting loudly the song of Roland, the 
epic of the Franks. It was really a new race, combin- 
ing the characteristics of Teuton and Celt, which thus 
won its footing on English soil — the Norman-French ; 
it represented the best blood and the highest culture of 
Europe, and its influence in the literature of England, 
as w^ell as in its life, proved an incalculable benefit in 
the generations to come. For a hundred years after 
the conquest of the island was actually completed, the 
lines between the conquerors and the conquered were 
rather sharply drawn. There were two races, Norman 
and English ; two languages side by side. Yet the 
natural tendency was toward assimilation, and in the 
end the result was the same as it had been in France : 
the native tongue triumphed over that of the invader. 
The Norman-French became Anglo-Norman, and finally 
English. In 1350 the English language was used in 
the schools, and in 1362, by royal decree, Edward III. 
made it the official language for courts of law. But 
the English of that period had been wonderfully ex- 
panded and enriched by the elements it had absorbed 
from the Norman-French ; its vocabulary settled by 
the usage of Wyclif and Chaucer, its inflections gradu- 
ally modified if not absolutely lost, it thus became the 
basis of our modern speech. With reference to this 
epoch in the history of our language it is customary 
to designate as the Middle English Period the three 
centuries which intervened between the Conquest and 
the death of Chaucer, although throughout the twelfth 
century the literature produced was almost entirely in 
Latin or in Norman-French. 



DEVELOPMENT OF MIDDLE ENGLISH 43 



While in England the literary spirit had languished 
since the death of Alfred, it had flourished Litera- 
with remarkable energy among the peoples of t^^^e 
western Europe. In the romance dialects of theNor- 
northern and southern France, indeed, a new 
literature had been created, a literature inspired by the 
institution of chivalry, and devoted to the glory of 
knighthood and the praise of love. The French trou- 
veres were just beginning to compose their Chansons 
de Gestes, or Songs of Deeds^ in which were celebrated 
the achievements of national heroes like Charlemagne 
and Roland. Love songs and tales of adventure were 
finding their place in literature. That scholarship 
which had made the schools and abbeys of England 
famous in the days of Bede and Alcuin, and had been 
ruthlessly blotted out in the harrying of the Danes, 
had blossomed again in France, where Alcuin himself 
had sowed the seed of learning at the court of Charle- 
magne. At the time of the Norman invasion French 
monks were the leaders in all scholastic and ecclesias- 
tical learning ; for a generation before that event Eng- 
lish students had been flocking to France as the centre 
of European culture, and young English priests betook 
themselves to the great monastic school at Bee, to learn 
wisdom at the feet of Lanfranc and Anselm. 



II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERA- 
TURE. 

The latter part of King William's life was occupied 
in completing the conquest which gave him ^j^jp^gj^ 
his title in history. Here and there over the of Ro- 
land arose the massive, square Norman castles 
of the barons. The monasteries were ruled by Nor- 
man monks. Lanfranc was made Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and at his death was succeeded by Anselm. 



44 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PEKIOD 



The literary works of ecclesiastics were in the Latin 
tongue, but the literature of France held its place at 
court and in the great halls of the barons. The English 
gleeman now gave place to the Norman minstrel, and 
tales of French heroes, sung in the foreign tongue, were 
heard in the banqueting halls of the nobles. Strange 
stories of Charlemagne and his twelve paladins, abound- 
ing in the reports of jousts and battles, of tricks and 
cunning ; the adventures of Grecian Alexander, too ; 
tales of the Trojan War ; and numerous other themes, 
many of them borrowed from the East, formed the 
subjects of trouvere smd jongleur, and kept their places 
through long years to come. Very nearly related to 
English scenes, and yet an importation from the poetry 
of France, were the traditionary romances of King 
Arthur and his Knights of the Table Round. The 
most important and indeed the immediate effect of this 
Norman-French influence upon our own English litera- 
ture was seen in the revival during the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries of an interest in the deeds of Eng- 
lish heroes and the traditions native to English soil. 
This interest speedily manifested itself in the similar 
treatment of English themes by Norman poets in Nor- 
man-French, and a little later, a treatment of these 
themes in English speech ; for by that time the Eng- 
lish spirit and the English language had proved stronger 
than the Norman, and had prevailed. The deeds of 
Hereward the Saxon had been told in Latin, and then in 
Norman verse ; English minstrels now entertained the 
court. Similarly also, the adventures of Guy of War- 
wick and Bevis of Hampton, local heroes of tradition, 
were sung by Anglo-Norman poets, and then in the Eng- 
lish tongue. An important element of Norman-French 
poetry is found in the treatment of these English 
themes. This is the element of love. The old Saxons 



KING HORN 



45 



in their rude way had sung of battle and of beauty ; 
but while tales of adventure and daring had been told, 
never a word had been uttered of the tenderer passion 
of love ; there had been no recognition of woman's subtle 
power in the hearts and lives of men, until the Nor- 
man poets had introduced their forms of courtly gal- 
lantry, had sung the devotion of knight to lady, and had 
spoken of the rewards of love. Among the earliest of 
our English poems to reflect this influence of the 
French are the three metrical romances of Sir Tris- 
tram, Haveloch the Dane, and King Horn, which ap- 
parently belong to the latter part of the thirteenth 
century. 

*' AUe beon hi blithe 
That to mi song lithe ! 
A song ihc schal you singe 
Of Murry the kinge," 

is the quaint beginning of this last-named poem. Murry 
is king of South Daneland ; his queen is King 
Godhild ; they have an only son, whose name 
is Horn. One day the sea-robbers — Saracens, the poem 
calls them — descend upon King Murry's shores, the 
king is slain, his queen driven into hiding, and Horn, 
his son, with twelve comrades is taken prisoner. But 
the rare beauty of the youths excites the pity of the 
pagan leader, and instead of putting them to the sword, 
their captors place the boys in a boat and set them 
adrift on the open sea. Miraculously the waves drive 
the ship to Westernesse, where King Ailmar adopts 
Horn and provides for his education. Horn grows in 
favor with all men, but most of all he is loved by the 
king's daughter. Maiden Rymenhild. Now the early 
comrades of the young prince are still in his company, 
and two of them are especially connected with the fate 
and fortunes of Childe Horn : one is Athulf , his trusty 



46 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



friend ; the other Fikenhild, who is a traitor. By the 
treachery of this latter, Ailmar is deceived, and Horn 
is banished from the land. New adventures, new wan- 
derings follow; at last Horn arrives in Ireland, and 
becomes King Thurston's man. For seven years he 
remains in Ireland a banished man, but always faith- 
ful to his love. Meanwhile King Modi of Reynes sues 
for the hand of Maiden Rymenhild ; Ailmar assents, and 
the wedding-day is set. Rymenhild and Athulf send a 
messenger to search for Horn and to warn him to re- 
turn. Horn is found in time, arrives in Westernesse 
on the day of the marriage, attends the feast disguised 
as a pilgrim, and in dramatic fashion expels the in- 
truder, and claims his own. But the course of true 
love does not yet run smoothly. Horn departs again, 
now to claim his rights in his home in Daneland. 
This he succeeds in doing, and discovers his mother. 
Queen Godhild, still alive. Again word comes from 
the bride in haste ; Rymenhild is once more in mortal 
peril, — this time at the hands of the traitor Fikenhild. 
Again Horn returns, rescues his betrothed, and all 
ends joyously with the wedding and a happy return to 
South Daneland, where Horn is king. 

The love story has now become an element in Eng- 
lish literature. It is the very kernel in the romance 
of King Horn^ although oddly, as it seems to us, the 
heroine woos the hero, and Horn is far too passive a 
lover to suit the Rymenhild s of a later day. 

Along with these metrical romances, there were cir- 
Foik Ro- culating in popular form during the twelfth, 
mance. thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries numer- 
ous shorter works in both verse and prose. Collections 
of short stories, like the Gesta Romanorum and the 
Process of the Seven Sages, were translated into Eng- 
lish. Short metrical tales were numerous, the best 



THE CHRONICLES 



47 



gradually appearing in the early ballads, and reappear- 
ing again and again in versions slightly different, the 
almost mysterious creations of the nameless poets of 
the people. Truly, they who told the tales and sang 
the gestes of Robin Hood will never fail of recogni- 
tion, even though their names are lost in the dimness 
of obscurity. By far the most noteworthy of these 
early romances, however, are those which embalm the 
traditions and legends of King Arthur. The knightly 
exploits of Arthur's followers, the stories of courtly 
love and of lawless passion, mystical tales of adventure 
in search of the Holy Grail, — these themes won all the 
greater interest and attention because they centred 
around a national hero who had found a home in 
Wales. Chretien de Troyes and German Wolfram 
had likewise sung the Grail saga, but English story- 
tellers claimed, and have since claimed, blameless King 
Arthur as their own. 

Nearly akin to these metrical romances and epic nar- 
ratives were the rhyming chronicles of the ^j^^ 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As we have Chroni- 
seen, the great prose Chronicle commenced 
in Alfred's time was continued by monkish annalists 
down to the death of Stephen in 1154 ; but the compo- 
sitions of these later chroniclers were of an entirely 
different sort, and present a curious mingling of histor- 
ical record and romantic tradition. The story of their 
evolution is similar to that of the romances already de- 
scribed, and they developed coincidently with the later. 
The most important of these works is Layamon's Brut^ 
a long narrative poem of 32,000 lines, in the old allit- 
erative metre of Anglo-Saxon poetry, spirited and 
rugged, reminding one not a little of Caedmon's vigor- 
ous verse. Layamon was an English priest living in 
Worcestershire. " He dwelt at Earnley," he tells us, 



48 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



" a noble church on the bank of Severn, near Rad- 
stone, where he read books. It came in mind to him 
and in his chiefest thought that he would tell the noble 
deeds of England, what the men were named, and 
whence they came, who first had English land after the 
flood." Layamon's poem was written near the begin- 
ning of the thirteenth century ; but it was not alto- 
gether an original work. Among the books which this 
English priest had read at Earnley were the histories 
of Bede and Albinus, and one which was itself entitled 
Brut^ composed in French verse by Wace, a Norman 
trouvere ; this poem Layamon translated, incorporat- 
ing it in his larger work. Wace in turn had appro- 
priated his material from still earlier tales which had 
been circulating in France ; but the original work to 
which both Layamon and Wace were most indebted 
was a so-called Hlstoria Regum Britannice^ or His- 
tory of the Kings of Britain^ which was written in 
Latin prose by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1147. In 
this work Geoffrey assumes to give the history of Brit- 
ain from the time when Brutus, the great-grandson of 
Aeneas, landed on its shores and gave his name to the 
island kingdom which he founded. Geoffrey was a 
Welsh priest at the court of Henry I., and died Bishop 
of St. Asaph in 1154. The remarkable imagination of 
this author provoked the ire of other chroniclers, who 
declared that he had " lied saucily and shamelessly ; " 
but along with its fictions the " history " preserved 
many ancient Welsh traditions, which Geoffrey may 
have believed. At all events, he gave to the world a 
wonderful story book, from which have passed into lit- 
erature such characters as Locrine and Gorbuduc, King 
Arthur, Cymbeline, and Lear. Thus, then, do we trace 
the fortunes of this work : Geoffrey completed his His- 
tory in Latin in 1147, Wace produced his French 



SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE 



49 



version of the Brut in 1155, and in 1205, or thereabout, 
Layamon incorporated the work of his predecessor in 
his own great English poem. The significance of its 
title is now obvious ; it is the epic of Brutus and his 
successors in the land. Layamon' s work is of consid- 
erable importance. Here is a true English poet draw- 
ing his material from Norman and Celt, celebrating the 
deeds not of Englishmen, but of Britons, appropriating 
their glory for the glory of England, and tacitly ac- 
cepting conditions as they are. The poem is purely 
English ; there are not fifty French words in its 32,000 
lines. It is the best product of English poetry since 
Cynewulf's time, and properly represents the transition 
period between the old and the new. 

About 1300 Robert of Gloucester wrote a rhymed 
Chronicle^ based on the works of his predecessors, and 
covering the field of English history from the time of 
Brutus down to the reign of Edward I. And a few 
years later Robert Manning qf Brunne wrote such 
another chronicle, based on translations of Wace and a 
metrical history recently composed by Peter Langtoft, 
a French monk. 

Along with the works of the romantic chroniclers of 
the fourteenth century may very well be sir John 
placed the curious volume of travels ascribed ■^jJ^f^'^Q 
to the authorship of Sir John Mandeville. ages and 
The reputed author of the book declares that "^^^'^^is. 
he set out on his travels on Michaelmas Day, 1322. 
He claims to have been more than thirty years abroad, 
and describes the lands, their peoples and customs with 
all the realism of an eye-witness. He tells us that he 
first wrote his account in Latin, that he then turned it 
into French, and then again, in 1356, into English. 
These statements have in time been disproved. The 
work may indeed have been a collection of traveler's 



50 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



tales, thus brought together and unified by the author, 
who seems to have been as credulous or fully as im- 
aginative a writer as Geoffrey of Monmouth. At all 
events, "Sir John" produced the most entertaining 
of narratives. Fascinating indeed these travels must 
have been to the readers of the time, for of no book, 
with the exception of the Scriptures, can more manu- 
scripts be found dating from the fourteenth and the 
beginning of the fifteenth centuries. According to 
Mandeville's account, Jerusalem is in the exact middle 
of the earth, " as may be proved and shown there by a 
spear which is fixed in the earth at the hour of mid- 
day, when it is equinoctial, which gives no shadow on 
any side." In Egypt he hears of that bird called the 
Phoenix, of which there is but one in the world. 

" It comes to burn itself on the altar of the temple at the 
end of five hundred years, for so long it lives ; and then the 
priests array their altar, and put thereon spices, and sulphur, 
and other things that will burn quickly, and the Phoenix 
comes and burns itself to ashes. The next day they find in 
the ashes a worm ; and the second day after they find a bird, 
alive and perfect ; and the third day it flies away. This bird 
is often seen flying in those countries. It is somewhat larger 
than an eagle, and has a crest of feathers on its head greater 
than that of a peacock ; its neck is yellow, its beak blue, 
and its wings of a purple color, and the tail is yellow and 
red." 

Most marvelous of all are the adventures of our trav- 
eler in the realm of Prester John, the great emperor 
of India. Here are giants twenty-eight or thirty feet 
in length who eat men's flesh ; evil women who have 
precious stones in their eyes with which they slay men 
by a look. In the kingdom of Cathay he discovers 
a people who have but one eye, which is in the mid- 
dle of the forehead ; another who have no heads, but 



hyfut- hrtcaf Wtn 




^ . m. ^ I ^ iai^^c. -] f 1 p?r J ^ef f'^ head ^jt^tce- 




FACSOnLE TAKEN FROM AN ELEVENTH-CENTURY MANUSCRIPT CONTAIN- 
ING AN ACCOUNT OF THE WONDERS OF THE EAST 
(This work is found largely incorporated in the so-called Travels of Sir John Mande- 
ville, and these illustrations are thus recognized as the inspiration of some of the 
marvels described. The manuscript is in the British Museum.) 



52 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



their eyes are in their shoulders. In one island are 
people who have the face all flat, without nose and 
without mouth ; in another the inhabitants " have the 
lip above the mouth so great that when they sleep in 
the sun they cover all the face with their lip." But 
the wonders of Mandeville's narrative are too numer- 
ous to be recorded here.^ 

The earliest known manuscript of this work is in 
French, and dated 1371. It was not translated into 
English until the beginning of the next century, and 
that translation is so defective as to preclude the pos- 
sibility of any connection with the original author. 
The Travels is really a compilation of various works in 
several languages, which supplied a mass of travelers' 
lore, and served as the only source of knowledge con- 
cerning the far-off, mysterious realms of the East. 
Whether or not there ever was a Sir John Mandeville 
we do not know; but the book which stands to the 
credit of this name is one of the most readable and 
most important prose works of its time. 

A distinct class of literature in the natural English 
Moraiiz- tongue is that illustrated by the Poema Mo- 
ingLitera- rale^ or Moral Ode^ a rhyming poem, found 
in a collection of homilies which date from 
the year 1160.^ The Ode is itself a homily in which 

1 The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mandeville is to be bad, 
edited by Henry Morley, in CasseWs National Library, for ten cents. 
^ The beginning of the poem is as follows : — 

" Ich sem elder than ich wes a wintre and alore ; 
Ic waelde more thanne ic dude ; mi wit ah to hen more ! 
Wei lange ic habbe child ibeon a weorde end ech adede ; 
Theh ic beo awintre eald, to yyng i eom a rede." 

It may be rendered thus : — 

" I am older than I was, in winters and in lore ; 
I wield more power than I did ; my wit ought to be more ! 
Too long I have been but a child in word and eke in doing ; 
Yet though I am in winters old, too young I am in choosing." 



MORALIZING LITERATURE 



63 



the unknown sermonizer admonishes his reader to lay 
up treasures in heaven. Its quaint verses, with their 
pronounced accentuation and regularly recurring end- 
rhymes, an innovation borrowed from French poetry, 
seem to have been very popular, as numerous copies of 
the poem are extant. The thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries produced many examples of this moralizing 
literature. The so-called Sayings of Alfred were com- 
piled apparently about 1200. Orm, or Ormin, yrote 
the religious poem which he called the Ormulum in 
the first quarter of the thirteenth century. Like the 
Moral Ode^ Orm's poem pleads for the religious life, 
and in plain, blunt English terms applies the lessons 
of the daily service of the Church. It was a work of 
prodigious length, for the 10,000 lines which have 
come down to us represent but a tenth part of the en- 
tire poem. Orm was of Danish descent, and lived in 
that part of England which had been occupied by the 
Danes. His language was the dialect of the Midland, 
and shows no trace of Norman influence. Unlike the 
author of the OcZe, Orm does not use end-rhyme. A 
curious feature of his work is the fact that he marked 
the quantity of the vowels by doubling the consonants 
after short vowels, a feature of considerable value to 
the linguist. The first line of his preface is thus writ- 
ten : — 

" Thiss boc is neminned. Ormulum forrthi tliatt Orm itt wrohhte." 
" This book is named Ormulum because Orm wrought it." 

The Ancren Riwle, or Mide of the Anchoresses, 
which belongs to the same period with the Ormulum, is 
a prose work compiled by sora^^known writer for the 
guidance of three young womenSa Dorsetshire, who 
had retired from the world and entered on the life of 
the cloister. It is in the southern dialect, and is inter- 



54 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



esting not alone for its devout naturalness and genuine 
Christian spirit, but also for its mingling of English 
with Norman words ; it is a good example of the 
transition period in southern England. The later 
Genesis and Exodus is a religious poem belonging in 
the middle of this same century. 

This religious literature continued to flourish through- 
out the fourteenth century. The titles of some of the 
more important works will in themselves be sufficiently 
significant. Many of these works have their genesis 
in the ecclesiastical literature of the Normans. Thus 
in 1303 Robert Manning of Brunne translated a 
French poem under the title of Handlyng Synne ; 
and in 1340 a prose work appeared with the singu- 
lar title Ayenhite of Inwyt^ which would have more 
meaning for us if we were to retranslate it by words 
of French rather than of Saxon origin ; the Ayen- 
hite of Inwyt is but the Remorse of Conscience lit- 
erally expressed in the native tongue. This work was 
in prose, but about the same year Richard Rolle of 
Hampole wrote in Latin, and in Northumbrian Eng- 
lish for the unlearned, a poem called the Priche of 
Conscience. Of some importance also is the Cursor 
Mundi^ a metrical version of the Old and New Testa- 
ment, which dates from about 1320. 

As we reach the latter part of the fourteenth cen-^ 
The Reii- ^^^Ji ourselves practically at the end 

giousRevi- of what might be called the transition period, \ 
Fourteenth which naturally follows the mingling of the 
Century. Normans and the English. Beside the great 
name of Chaucer three names of prominence meet our 
eye: those of Langland, Wyclif, and Gower. The 
first two are inseparably connected with the literature 
of religion, although their work is distinct from that 
of the ecclesiastics who had preceded them. It is 



PIERS THE PLOWMAN 



65 



necessary to remember that at the beginning of the 
thirteenth century the life of the English Church had 
received an extraordinary impulse through the ap- 
pearance of the mendicant friars who entered in the 
train of the Normans. They were for the most part 
men of devoted life, educated in French schools, and 
exerting an influence that was generally wholesome 
and helpful. But as time passed on and the religious 
orders acquired wealth, their religious life degenerated, 
until by the middle of the fourteenth century they had 
grown hypocritical as well as proud. Their influence 
became pernicious and a source of evil in society. In 
this same period the condition of the common people 
had been rendered intolerable by the results of war 
and by the visitations of plague. In 1349 the Black 
Death had swept through the kingdom. Entire dis- 
tricts had been depopulated. In their wretchedness 
and their discontent, it was natural that sober-minded 
men of the common class should turn to religion for 
relief. Then it was that that singular character, Wil- 
liam Langiand, with his tall, gaunt figure, with his 
contempt for pride and wealth, appeared in London. 

In 1362 Langiand first wrote his Vision of Piers 
the Plowman. This was an allegory of dream, ^^^^^ 
which the poet declares came to him while piow- 
asleep one May morning by the side of a 
brook among the Malvern Hills. In his vision Piers 
finds " a fair field full of folk " of all manner of men, 
poor and rich together. Some are sweating at the 
plough, others wasting inordinately their substance in 
gluttony and lust. He beholds the Tower of Truth, 
and also the Dungeon of Falsehood ; typical characters 
drawn from the life with which he was familiar, repre- 
senting various classes whose shortcomings he wished 
to rebuke, are introduced by Langiand with a vigorous 



56 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



force that gives impressiveiiess to his work. While 
the spirit and tone of the Vision are serious and severe, 
the extraordinary vividness of his portraits, his keen 
insight into the ways of men, the zeal and passion of 
the poet, give to Langland's work a real distinction 
in the literature of the time. The poem itself is 
extremely interesting in its metrical structure. It is 
in the Midland dialect and stands forth as the last ex- 
ample of the old alliterative verse in English poetry. 
There are no end-rhymes. The diction is like that of 
Chaucer.^ Langland was a reformer, and he devoted 
the last years of his life to the amplification of his 
Vision. In 1393 he added the poems Do Wel^ Do 
Bet, and Do Best. Long Will, as his contemporaries 
called him, died at Bristol probably in the year 1400. 

While Langland's Vision was stirring the hearts 
John Wye- consciences of the common people of 

Uf, 1324- England, there was already in preparation 
a work destined to surpass all other books 
of its time in its influence for good and its effect upon 
the development of our literary English. This was 
Wyclif's great translation of the Bible. While the 
dreamer of the Vision of Biers the Blowman was but 
a humble unordained servant of the Church, John 
Wyclif was a prominent figure in ecclesiastical and 
scholastic circles. A graduate of Oxford, he received 
the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and became Master 
of Balliol College in that University. Aroused and 
indignant at the open corruption of those who assumed 

1 Lang-land's method of versification may be seen from the following 
lines which form the beginning of his poem : — 

" In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne 
I shope 1 me in shroudes 2 as I a shepe 3 were, 
In habit as an heremite unholy of werkes 
Went wyde in this world wondres to here." 

» Clad. 2 Garments. » Shepherd. 



JOHN WYCLIF 



57 



to represent the Church, Wyclif's soul was set on fire 
with the ardor, and some of the fanaticism, of the re- 
former : even before his degree had been conferred, he 
had in his Objections to Friars sounded a note which 
was but the prelude to his vigorous, fearless career. 
In 1375 he was sent with the authority of Government 
to Bruges to protest against the encroachments of 
papal power; but three years later, having disputed 
the doctrine of transubstantiation and other teachings 
of the Church, he was summoned before an ecclesias- 
tical court in London to answer charges of heresy. 
Then came other attacks ; still Wyclif continued to 
preach and to write against the evil deeds of the friars, 
and also ao-ainst certain doo-mas of Rome. The seed 
of his sowing speedily bore fruit. Disciples and ad- 
herents of the reformer repeated his words and ex- 
tended his influence. In 1374 he had been presented 
to the living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, and at 
Lutterworth he preached and wrote, although he con- 
tinued as lecturer at the University till silenced in 
1381. Enemies attempted to suppress him ; the pope 
issued bulls demanding his arrest. Only his popular- 
ity with the masses, and the firm friendship of a few 
powerful nobles, saved Wyclif from imprisonment, if 
not from death. In 1384 he was summoned by Pope 
Urban to answer to charges at Eome ; but in that 
same year the defiant reformer was stricken with paral- 
ysis while celebrating mass in his Lutterworth church, 
and two days later died. Forty years after his death 
the spirit of fanatical hate found expression in an act 
of impotent vengeance upon Wyclif's remains : the 
coffin was broken open, his bones were burned, and 
the ashes cast into the waters of the Swift, whence, 
as Thomas Fuller said in his Church History^ "the 
brook conveyed them to the Avon, Avon into Severn, 



58 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean ; 
and thus the ashes of Wyclif are the emblem of his 
doctrine, which now has dispersed all the world over." 

Distinguished as a pioneer in the English Reforma- 
tion, Wyclif holds his place in literature because he 
made the first translation of the entire Bible into Eng- 
lish. The whole of the New Testament and a consid- 
erable portion of the Old Testament he himself trans- 
lated from the Latin Vulgate ; the remainder of the 
work was done under his direction. It was a book 
which had as much influence in fixing the form of our 
language as did the work of Chaucer. The plain yet 
impressive diction of this translator may be recognized 
in the following passage : — 

" But in o day of the woke ful eerli thai camen to the 
grave, and broughten swete smelling spices that thei hadden 
araved. And thei founden the stoon turnyd awey fro the 
graue. And thei geden in and foundun not the bodi of the 
Lord Jhesus. And it was don, the while thei weren astonyed in 
thought of this thing, lo twe men stodun bisidis hem in schyn- 
yng cloth. And whanne theidredden and bowiden her sem- 
blaunt into erthe, thei seiden to hem, what seeken ye him that 
lyueth with deede men ? He is not here : but he^is risun : 
haue ye minde how he spak to you whanne he yras yit in 
Golilee, and seide, for it behoueth mannes sone to be bitakun 
into the hondis of synf ul men : and to be crucifyed ; and the 
thridde day to rise agen ? " 

Little is known of the personality of the man who 
JohnGower, was Chaucer's principal literary contempo- 
1325-1408. rary, and whom he mentions as the " moral 
Gower." This writer was apparently a native of 
Kent; he was a man of wealth, and while a secular 
poet like Chaucer, he must have been a serious student 
of the times and impressed with the grave conditions 
then existing in society and politics. He is remem- 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



59 



bered as the author of three important works : the 
Speculum 3Ieditantis, or the 3Ii7'ror of One Jleditat- 
ing, written in French ; of this book no manuscript has 
survived. His second work, the Vox Clamantis, or 
the Voice of One Crying, is a Latin poem in hexameter 
and pentameter verse ; it was composed just after the 
rebellion under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw in 1381, 
and pictures the condition of society and moralizes on 
its ills. Gower's third production is the Confessio 
Amantis, or the Lover^s Confession ; this is in Eng- 
lish, and is a poetical collection of tales bound to- 
gether by a story-thread in the style of Boccaccio's 
Decameron and of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It 
seems to have been written about 1385. Although a 
studious and industrious writer, John Gower was not 
a model story-teller ; his tales are too dull to hold the 
interest of present-day readers, and by the side of 
Chaucer he occupies an inferior place. 

III. THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 

The beginnings of English literature as we have 
traced them seem to belong to the shadow-land of a 
dim past. The makers of that early literature are 
often nameless, and the personality of many whose 
names are known is vaguely indistinct. It is as though 
we saw men only through the mists of a gray, chill 
twilight before the dawn. In the latter half of the 
fourteenth century, however, there comes a burst of 
sunlight that brightens and warms every reader's heart. 
Men move in a visible and a familiar world ; they 
speak in hearty English tones. AVe know them for 
our kinsfolk, although the modulations and the accent 
strike somewhat strangely on our ears. There is the 
song of lark and throstle. The breath of an English 
May is in the atmosphere. It is the age of Geoffrey 
Chaucer, — 



60 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



..." Poet of the dawn, who wrote 
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age 
Made beautiful with song ; and as I read 
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note 
Of lark and linnet, and from every page 
Rise odors of plowed field or flowery mead." ^ 

The England of Chaucer's day was the England of 
Chaucer's Edward III., of Kichard II., and of Henry 
England. jy ^he great Duke of Lancaster, John of 
Gaunt, was himself the poet's patron and protector. It 
was a confused but eventful epoch in English history, 
a period of foreign war and civil strife. When Geof- 
frey Chaucer was a boy of five or six, the English won 
the historic victory of Crecy ; ten years later he was 
old enough to shout with the rest over the news of 
Poictiers, and to join in the tumult of triumph when 
the Black Prince led his pikesmen and his archers 
through the crowded London streets, with the king of 
France, a royal prisoner, riding at his side. At nine- 
teen Chaucer was himself a soldier, fighting on French 
soil in maintenance of Edward's claim to France. The 
commotions which attended the rise of the Lancastrians 
affected directly the fortunes of the poet, and the ac- 
cession of John of Gaunt's son to the throne occurred 
a twelvemonth before Chaucer's death. 

In appearance England was still medieval. The 
Society chivalry was in its very flower. The 

knight, attended by esquire and yeomen, rode 
abroad, engaged in crusade or on private quarrel, 
fought the pagans of the Orient, or contended in the 
lists with knights of other nations for the glory of 
his own. Pural England was gradually developing. 
Manor houses, with all the barns and buildings of a 
fertile, prosperous countryside, are more typical of this 
age than the heavy threatening towers and ramparts of 

1 Longfellow's sonnet, Chaucer. 



LUXURY AND EXTRAVAGANCE 



61 



the northern castles, now gray with time. In tliese 
more peaceful abodes of the well-to-do franklins, or 
free landholders, — the gentry of a later day, — was 
dispensed a hospitality as abundant as it was rude. 
Along the highways moved a picturesque procession, 
typical of English life : chapmen or peddlers, dickering 
with perhaps a ploughman, or with some village girl or 
gossip more curious for news than wares ; merchants 
riding busily, somewhat wrapped in thoughts of trade ; 
soldiers, farm hands, mendicant friars, officers of the 
law, minstrels, pilgrims, — wayfarers of varying rank 
and class. And men in buckram suits, or Kendal 
green, harbored in the tracts of forest wilderness, or 
slunk behind the thickets at the roadside ; it was safer 
to travel in company than alone. 

In the world of trade the merchant-companies, or 
guilds, such as the merchant-tailors, the fish- Luxury 
mongers, or the goldsmiths' companies, en- 
joyed a prestige and privilege which made gance. 
them a political as well as a commercial power. Un- 
der Edward III. they received the right to elect mem- 
bers to Parliament. Wealthy merchants lent large 
sums of money to the king. English travelers, not 
only those engaged in trade, or dispatched on official 
errands, but sightseers, pilgrims, pleasure seekers, were 
found in every country of Europe ; they observed 
closely and intelligently, and became conversant with 
the customs and literatures of foreign lands. Often 
they imitated or imported the luxuries enjoyed abroad. 
Edward III. played chess on a board of jasper and 
crystal silver-mounted. He gave his daughter Mar- 
garet a wedding present of 2000 pearls, and to his 
mistress, Alice Ferrers, 20,000 large pearls in a single 

Fine gothic structures rise ; splendid tapestries adorn 



62 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



the walls of the rich ; beautiful windows of stained 
glass admit the light. The newer houses of the wealthy 
now have chimneys. Singular dishes are concocted for 
the luxurious taste of the time. Hens and rabbits are 
prepared chopped together with almonds, raisins, sugar, 
ginger, herbs, onions, rice-flour — the whole colored 
with saffron. Peacocks are roasted and served in their 
own plumage. Along with this extravagance of table 
there are incongruities in etiquette, and an absence of 
many simple conveniences, indispensable to-day, that 
impress us, perhaps unduly, with the uncouth crudities 
of the age. Forks are not yet invented ; one holds his 
meat with his left hand and carves with his right. We 
find one particular cook commended because he does 
not scratch his head or wipe his plates with his tongue. 
There is an extreme frankness in habits and in speech 
on the part of both women and men. What to us ap- 
pears grossly out of place to both eye and ear is in 
many cases tolerated without a thought. On the whole 
the position of woman is not altogether enviable. 

Moreover, there were many contrasts and some strong 
Evils of shadows in English life during Edward's bril- 
the Time. 2iant and extravagant reign. The Church had 
fallen on evil times ; its corruption was notorious even 
among the people themselves. Already, in the protests 
of Langland and the threatenings of Wyclif, the spirit 
of the Reformation had begun to speak, but the fullness 
of time had not yet come. The great abbeys supported 
a luxury no less extravagant than that of the castle. 
The sensual, ease-loving friars, the shrewd and con- 
scienceless priests, the pardoners with their gross im- 
postures, the friars pertinaciously begging their vaga- 
bond way over England — these classes furnished types 
which were deemed fairly representative of the time, 
and which appealed to others than Chaucer as the bane 



LONDON 



63 



of rich and poor alike. Happily, now and then was 
found some poor parish priest, benignant, humble, de- 
voted to his flock, versed in the spirit as in the letter 
of the Word, forgetful of his own needs in errands of 
mercy, himself a safe example to the sheep, following 
faithfully the precepts that he taught, a veritable shep- 
herd and no hireling. 

Among the common people were many troublous 
signs. There was a great gulf between rich and poor, 
who had little in common except the air they breathed. 
But that air was English air, and when the abuse of 
power became too gross, or the callous indifference of 
the one class to the woes of the other intolerable, there 
were outbreaks and revolts. Wat the Tyler was a 
day laborer, yet the rebellion he headed in 1381 threw 
the entire south of England into the turmoil of war. 
The commons were beginning to feel their strength and 
to clamor for rights. 

London was a populous and busy city — then, as 
now, the heart of England's life. Upon the j^^^^^^ 
broad surface of the Thames floated ships 
from the Mediterranean and the Baltic, some of them 
laden with the silks and spices of the East. Wharves 
and warehouses are piled with English products, wool, 
skins, cloth, metals, butter, and cheese, — consignments 
to Germany and Russia, to France and Spain. Ship- 
men and customs officers, merchants and exchangers, 
tradesmen, carters, travelers, men with foreign faces, 
mingle in confused activity. The river is the main 
thoroughfare as well for rowboats and barges, which 
convey business men and pleasure parties from point to 
point. Near one extreme of the town is Westminster ; 
near the eastern limit rises the historic Tower. St. 
Paul's, a gothic structure, stands between the two, not 
far from the riverside and near the approach to Lon- 



64 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



don bridge, wliich, all overhung with shops and houses, 
affords communication with the Surrey side of the 
Thames. A continuous throng of citizens and stran- 
gers pass and repass on this famous bridge. Southwark 
is on the southern bank, where are most of the places 
of amusement and resort. Here stood the noted Tab- 
ard Inn, " faste by the belle." Beyond the suburb lay 
green fields and open meadowland, over which wound 
the country highways through Surrey and Kent. Yon- 
der the road to Canterbury might be traced. On the 
side of London away from the Thames, the city was 
protected by its medieval wall, pierced here and there 
by gates, through which visitors entered and left the 
town. Above these gates were heavy bastions, and in 
one of these somewhat sombre towers Geoffrey Chaucer 
was lodged for about twelve years. The streets of 
London were narrow and dirty beyond belief. The 
centre of the roadway was a running sewer ; pigs wal- 
lowed in the mire, notwithstanding an earlier law which 
read, " And whoso will keep a pig, let him keep it in 
his own house." Such, in part, was the capital city of 
England in the fourteenth century, and such, allowing 
for increased population, it remained for a hundred 
years. 

IV. GEOFFKEY CHAUCER: 1340(?)-1400. 

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London about 1340. 
Youth father, John Chaucer, was a wine mer- 

chant in Thames Street. He had been pur- 
veyor to the household of Edward III., and was evi- 
dently in excellent standing as a citizen, obtaining for 
his son a position much coveted for a youth in that age, 
— an appointment as page in the royal household. It 
is in this connection that we first hear of Geoffrey 
Chaucer, a youth of seventeen, attached to the family 



CHAUCER'S EARLY WORKS 



65 



of Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in the immediate 
service of Elizabeth his wife. Here the boy received 
his first glimpse of the life at court, his first lessons in 
courtly fashions and behavior. He waited on his mis- 
tress, did her errands, assisted in the table service, was 
taught music and the languages, associated with youths 
of a station more exalted than his own, and grew fa- 
miliar with the habits and behavior of men of rank 
and note. In the fall of 1359 Edward invaded France, 
and Geoffrey Chaucer had some part in that campaign, 
falling as a prisoner into the hands of the French. In 
the following March he was ransomed, the king con- 
tributing sixteen pounds to the necessary sum. From 
this time on Chaucer appears to have been attached to 
the court, and is referred to in the records of 1367 as 
valet to the king, with a salary of twenty pounds. He 
was already married to Philippa, lady-in-waiting to the 
queen. It must not be supposed that during these 
years, from seventeen to twenty-seven or thirty, the 
scholar's tastes and instincts had been stinted. That 
he was ever a student of books and a lover of nature is 
clear enough from the literary material of which Chau- 
cer was master ; and this was the budding time of his 
genius. 

Chaucer had already found the power to express 
himself in rhyme, although, as we should ex- uariy 
pect, it is in the conventional form of the only Works, 
literature with which the young poet was then ac- 
quainted, the French. Three poems are extant which 
belong apparently to this first period : Chaucer's 
A. B. C, a prayer to the Virgin Mary, freely trans- 
lated from the French of a Cistercian monk, and taking 
its title from the fact that its twenty-three stanzas be- 
gin consecutively with the various letters of the alpha- 
bet in order ; The Cowpleynte to Pite^ a love poem, 



66 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



melodious and graceful, though in the conventional 
manner of French love poems of the day ; and TliQ 
Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse^ a poem of 1334 lines, 
in honor of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt. As this 
lady died in 1369, this elegy is assigned to that same 
year. Besides these poems, Chaucer composed also 
many songs and ballads, with which, according to John 
Gower, " the land ful filled was, over all." It is also 
true that Chaucer had made a translation of the most 
popular French poem of that age, a long allegory of 
love entitled Le Roman de la Rose, The English 
version of this work, known as The Romaunt of the 
Rose, although attributed to Chaucer for many years, 
is not regarded as his. 

Between the years 1370 and 1385 the poet's life was 
The Sec- rather that of a man of action than that of a 
ondPe- man of letters, and yet coincidently with the 
discharge of important public duties, Chaucer 
was introduced to a new world of art and culture, un- 
der the inspiration of which he accomplished his finest 
work. In December, 1372, he was sent by the king to 
the cities of Genoa and Florence on an important mis- 
sion pertaining to commercial relations between those 
cities and London. He was absent on this errand 
about three months, returning to England in April, 
1373. Precisely what Chaucer did in Italy at this 
time is all unknown to us, but we may well imagine the 
delight with which he looked on the beautiful works 
about him. Pisa was already famous for its marvelous 
tower of creamy marble, while in Florence, Giotto had 
completed the slender campanile now called by his 
name. 

Just where Chaucer walked or rode, with whom he 
conversed, and whom he went to see, we know not ; 
but Francis Petrarch, the laureate of Italy, was still 



ITALIAN INFLUENCES 



67 



alive, and could be visited in his country retreat near 
Padua. Boccaccio was already famous as the author 
of romances and tales which were to gather new fame 
in the hands of this English poet. In the fall of that 
very year, 1373, Boccaccio was to commence in Flor- 
ence a series of public lectures on the Divine Comedy 
of Dante, the great world-poet of medievalism, who 
had died some fifty years before. 

Thus did Chaucer enter Italy, that country which 
was foremost in the great awakening of j^^^^ 
thought and life, which we call the Renas- iniiu- 
cence, or new birth of culture, the real begin- 
ning of the modern world. The impressions of this 
visit, undoubtedly profound, were intensified by a sec- 
ond journey in 1378, when Chaucer was intrusted by 
young King Richard with a mission to Milan, occupy- 
ing some three months, as before. Chaucer was now an 
extremely busy man, with small leisure for literary work. 
In 1374 he was appointed comptroller of the customs 
and subsidies on wools, skins, and tanned hides, in the 
port of London, it being explicitly stated that the du- 
ties of this office should be performed by the comp- 
troller in person, and not by deputy. The death of 
Edward, and the accession of the boy -king, Richard II., 
occurred in June, 1377. In 1382 Chaucer received a 
new appointment to the office of comptroller of the 
petty customs, which he held in addition to his first 
collectorship. In 1385 he was granted permission to 
employ a deputy, an arrangement which afforded much 
relief. 

In spite of the laborious days, these years of the 
poet's life were by no means unproductive or unimpor- 
tant. Very early in this period, perhaps, belongs a 
prose version of the famous medieval essay by Boethius 
(died 525 a. d.), De Consolatione Philosophiae, first 



68 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred. It is 
unlikely that Chaucer wrote much during the inter- 
val between the two Italian journeys, but shortly after 
the second visit he produced what, next to The Canter- 
hury Tales^ is the poet's greatest success. This is the 
Troilus and Criseyde^ a love romance based upon a 
much longer poem, 11 Filostrato^ or Lovers Victim^ by 
Boccaccio. Chaucer's poem contains over 8000 lines, 
and not more than a third of the whole is to be recog- 
nized as borrowed from its original. In this work the 
poet first reveals that wonderful story-telling power 
which has made him famous among all makers of imagi- 
native literature. Troilus and Criseyde contains in 
great degree the spirit of the modern novel. Love and 
love's fickleness is the theme, and the characters of 
Troilus, Criseyde, and the wily, coarse-natured Pandar 
are developed with the finest art. 
Thus does the poem begin : — 

" The double sorowe of Troilus to tellen 

That was the Kinge Priamus' sone of Troye, 
In lovyng- how hise aventures fellen 
From wo to welle, and after out of joye, 
My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye 
Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte ! 
This woful vers, that wepen as I wryte ! " 

Besides this metrical romance, the most important 
Chaucer's P^^^^ of Chaucer's second period are two alle- 
AUego- gories : The Parlement of Foules^ or As- 
'*®^* semhly of Birds^ and The Hous of Fame. 
The first has a political significance and celebrates the 
wooing of Anne of Bohemia in 1382 by the poet's 
master, Richard II. The other poem was a much 
longer work. It is somewhat in the spirit of Dante, 
and recounts the poet's visit, in his dream, to the glit- 
tering hall of Fame, whither a great golden eagle car- 
ries him. Here upon a mountain of ice are carved 



THE THIRD PERIOD 



69 



the illustrious names of every age ; only those of the 
ancient world are best preserved, since they are graven 
on the shady side. The house of Rumor is also visited, 
but its description is incomplete. In this brief per- 
sonal touch, the poet permits a glimpse of himself. 
He represents Jove's Eagle addressing him thus : — 

" Not of thy verray neyghebores, 
Tliat dwellen almost at thy dores, 
Thou herest neither that ne this ; 
For whan thy labour doon al is, 
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anon, 
And, also dombe as any stoon, 
Thou sittest at another hoke. 
Til fully das wed is thy loke, 
And livest thus as an hermyte." ^ 

The Hous of Fame was finished in 1384. 

The last period of Chaucer's life falls in the troubled 
times which perplexed his contemporary The Third 
Gower, and inspired the last grim visions of Period. 
Langland, — the years which justified the forebodings 
and rebukes of Wyclif. Although in 1386 the poet 
took his seat in Parliament as Knight of the shire for 
Kent, his fortunes quickly turned. In that same year, 
through a combination of the nobles, Richard was com- 
pelled to transfer his authority to a regency controlled 
by the Duke of Gloucester.^ John of Gaunt was absent 
temporarily from the kingdom, and the party with which 
Chaucer was identified lost completely for the time its 
prestige. The poet found no favor with those who 
now assumed the power. His offices and privileges 
were taken from him, and he fell even into penury. 
His misfortunes were aggravated by the death of his 
wife Philippa in 1387. A brief period of prosperity 

1 Book ii. 140. 

2 Of this and suhsequent events, a vivid picture is given in Shake- 
speare's historical drama of Richard II. 



70 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



came in 1389, but Chaucer was again in distress shortly 
after. In 1391 he was entirely dependent upon the 
generosity of his old patron, John of Gaunt. 

The spirit of the poet was altered ; not that he grew 
morose, but that naturally enough a sober melancholy 
crept into his verse. The chastening of his own ex- 
perience affected, not un wholesomely, the tone of his 
compositions. A good illustration of his changing 
mood is seen in the serious short poem. Fie fro the 
Pres : — 

"Fie fro the pres and dwelle with soth fastnesse ; 
Suffice the thy good though hit be smale ; 
For horde hath hate and clymbyng tikelnesse, 
Pres hath envye and wele is blent over alle ; 
Savour no more than the behove shalle, 
Reule wel thyself that other folk canst rede, 
And trouthe the shall delyver, hit ys no drede. 



That the ys sent recyve in buxumnesse, 
The wrastlynge of this world asketh a fall ; 
Her is no home, her is but wyldernesse. 
Forth, pilgrime ! Forth, best, out of thy stalle ! 
Look up on hye and thonke God of alle ; 
Weyve thy luste and let thy gost the lede, 
And trouthe the shall delyver, hit ys no drede ! " 

In The Legende of Goode Women, a poem of 2500 
lines and incomplete, Chaucer now found heart to write 
in praise of woman's faithful love. 

But this last period of the poet's life is made mem- 
orable by the creation of his crowning work. It is 
as the author of The Canterbury Tales that we best 
know Geoffrey Chaucer; and this great work stands 
forth as the undisputed masterpiece of English litera- 
ture throughout the entire Middle English Period. 
The composition of portions of this work occupied the 
poet at different periods, but the definite plan of the 
masterpiece as a whole belongs to the last ten or twelve 
years of his life. 



THE CANTERBURY TALES 



71 



The idea of sucli an arrangement of entertaining 
narratives as Chaucer here brings together .jj^gg^jj. 
may have been suggested by the Decame- terijury 
ron of the Italian Boccaccio, with which it 
seems highly probable that the English poet was famil- 
iar. Boccaccio's device to secure an artificial unity for 
his series of detached stories is comparatively simple. 
He presents, in a lovely villa amid the cypresses and 
olive trees on the hillside overlooking Florence, a gay 
party of ten lords and ladies who have fled the city be- 
cause of the plague. They are bound to introduce no 
news from without that is not agreeable. They seat 
themselves in the delightful shade of the grove, and re- 
late to each other the tales which pleasantly enable them 
to forget the awful suffering of the afflicted city. The 
English poet is peculiarly happy in the artifice which 
provides the machinery of his plan. He hits upon a 
characteristic incident of English life, — the passage of 
a company of pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas a 
Becket at Canterbury ; an occurrence, not infrequent, 
that permitted the picturesque grouping of many na- 
tional types that meet us in The Canterbury Tales. 
The most familiar portion of Chaucer's works is the 
famous Prologue^ in which the poet so happily de- 
scribes his party and accounts for his own presence in 
the group. These 850 lines, setting forth the intention 
of the book and vividly presenting the nine and twenty 
pilgrims, one by one, is a masterpiece of literature, and 
the best example left us of our first great poet's genial 
insight into character, and his superb power in portray- 
ing human nature realistically. The personages that 
figured in Chaucer's Canterhiiry Tales passed imme- 
diately into literary immortality, and more than one 
skillful painter has transferred Chaucer's unmistak- 
able portraits to his canvas. But one thing must be 



72 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



emphasized : the Tales are to be regarded as parts of 
a natural and unified, even if not a completed, work. 
Whether a part of the original purpose or not. The 
Canterbury Tales as a whole present a vivid picture of 
English life and character in Chaucer's day. Thanks 
to the skillful grouping, the use of the " links " that 
introduce the several tales, and the bits of dialogue 
which intervene, suggesting coincidently the progress 
of the pilgrims and the movement of the narrative — 
above all to the dramatic skill which fits so appropri- 
ately to character and rank the quality of the stories 
told — we have here a series of subtle portraits of 
English men and women as Chaucer knew them and 
interpreted their lives to us. Unfortunately the poet 
did not finish his work. The plan provided that each 
pilgrim should recount two stories on the way to Can- 
terbury and two returning ; but the narrative is broken 
before the company reaches its destination, and only 
twenty-four tales are told. 

The last year of Chaucer's life saw a brief better- 
Chaucer's ment of the fortunes which had proved so 
Death. variable. Henry Bolingbroke ascended the 
throne as King Henry IV. in September, 1399. To 
him the poet addressed his humorous but pathetic Com- 
pleynt to his Purs. A pension of forty pounds was 
settled upon him at once, and Chaucer leased a house in 
Westminster in December of that year. But hardly a 
twelvemonth of life remained to him. He died Octo- 
ber 25, 1400, and was the first of the poets to be laid 
in that historic corner of the Abbey which has been 
consecrated by their remains. 

Thus the life and work of Geoffrey Chaucer are 
Apprecia- complete. A lover of books and a careful 
Chaucer. reader of all the literatures then existing, he 
was no less a lover of nature in all her forms. The 



APPRECIATION OF CHAUCER 



73 



outside world was full of charm to him, and his con- 
fession is prettily recorded in terms familiar to all 
readers of his works : — 

" And as for me, tho that I konne but lyte, 
On bokes for to rede I me delyte 
And in myn herte have hem in reverence 
And to hem give I f eyth and full credence 
So hertely that ther is game noon 
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, 
But yt be seldom on the holy day, 
Save certeynly, whan that the moneth of May 
Is comen, and that I here the foules singe 
And that the floures gynnen for to springe — 
Farewel my boke, and my devocioun ! " ^ 

The student who knows Chaucer only in his Prologue 
will hardly appreciate this poet's ability to describe 
the various phases of nature's loveliness. Thus does 
the sun rise on Palamon and Arcite : — 

" The bisy larke, messager of day, 
Salueth in hir song the morwe gray ; 
And fiery Phebus riseth up so brighte, - 
That al the orient laugheth of the lighte. 
And with his stremes dryeth in the greves 
The silver droppes hangyng on the leves." ^ 

Again the bright hues of nature, the fresh coolness of 
the atmosphere, the abounding life of bough and 
brook, are figured forth in these smoothly flowing 
lines : — 

" A gardyn saw I f ul of blospemy bowys 
Upon a river in a grene mede. 
There as ther swetnesse everemore i-now is ; 
With flouris white, blewe, and yelwe, and rede, 
And colde welle-stremys, no-thyng dede, 
That swemyn f ul of smale fishes lite, 
With fynnys rede and skalys sylvyr bryghte, 
On every bow the bryddis herde I synge 
With voys of aungel in here armonye." ^ 

^ The Legende of Goode Women, Prologue, 11. 30-39. Compare the 
lines following, also the poet's description of the daisy, 11. 171-207. 

2 The Knight 's Tale, 11. 633-638. 

3 The Pat-lement of Foules, U. 183-191. 



74 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



But above all to be noted in a study of Chaucer is 
the unfailing insight and genial charity with which he 
surveys and understands his fellow men. Their weak- 
nesses and frailties provoke a mild rebuke ; but even 
in his chiding, Chaucer smiles, and the world is con- 
strained to smile sympathetically with him. His grave 
contemporary, Langland, utterly devoid of humor, — 
that saving sense of every age, — looks sourly forth on 
this same world, and straightway puts on sackcloth in 
a sort of vicarious penitence for its sins. Chaucer 
plainly loves his fellows and the world he lives in ; 
that which is sent he is able " to receyve in buxum- 
nesse," and thanks God for all. And his life, as we 
remember, with all its cheery brightness, had its full 
measure of disappointment and care. Wholesome and 
kindly, the first of English writers to portray real- 
istically the life and manners of a time, there is no 
more companionable author in all our literature than 
Chaucer. 

The struggle for usage between the French of the 
Norman conquerors and the native speech of the Sax- 
ons had virtually come to an end before Chaucer began 
to write. It was in 1362 that English was again offi- 
cially recognized, and Henry IV. took his oath in 1399, 
" in the name of Fadir, Son and Holy Gost," the first 
of English kings since William's time to thus employ 
on that occasion the native Saxon tongue. But at the 
middle of the fourteenth century, the language was still 
an uncertain, rude, confusing mixture of dialect forms, 
unwieldy and uncouth in the hands of those who aimed 
at literary style. Chaucer's usage was a revelation 
to his contemporaries, and although neither they nor 
his immediate successors were ever able to manipulate 
its material with the grace and force of the master, 
his hall-mark, nevertheless, was set upon the literary 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



75 



diction of the kingdom, and his service in the choice 
and molding of its phraseology cannot easily be over- 
drawn.^ 

Of complete editions, that edited by W. W. Skeat (Ox- 
ford, 1894, 7 vols.) is authoritative. The Foeti- sugges- 
cal Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by Arthur ^ioi^s for 
Gilman (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Bos- ciial^er. 
ton, 1880, 3 vols.), is conveniently arranged, and Texts, 
has an excellent introduction upon "The Times and the 
Poet." The Globe Chaucer, edited by Alfred W. Pollard 
(Macmillan, 1898), contains the complete text in a single 
volume. There are numerous editions of the Prologue, with, 
and without, one or more of the Tales. Those published by 
the Clarendon Press are among the best known. The stu- 
dent cannot do better than supply himself with the scholarly 
edition, by Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., of the Prologue, The 
Knight 's Tale, and The Nun's Priest 's Tale (Houghton, 
Mifflin and Company, 1899). 

Two valuable works especially useful in presenting the 
social conditions of the age are English Wayfar- chaucer's 
ing Life in the XlVth Century and A Liter- Times. 
ary History of the English People (Putnam, 1895), both 
by J. J. Jusserand. See also Wright's History of Do- 
mestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the 
Middle Ages and Browne's Chaucer's England. Sidney 
Lanier's Boy's Froissart may well be read. 

The essay on Chaucer, by J. R. Lowell, in My Study 

Windows, or vol. iv. of Lowell's Works (Hough- Biography, 
ton, Mifflin and Company), is one of the best Criticism, 
appreciations of the English poet ever written. Ward's 

Chaucer, in the English Men of Letters Series, is a con- 
venient brief biograj)hy ; still more condensed is the Chau- 
cer by A. W. Pollard in English Literature Primer Series 
(Macmillan). The chapters on Chaucer in vol. ii. of Ten 
Brink's English Literature (English translation. Holt) is 

^ Compare on this point, J. R. Lowell, My Study Windows, p. 257. 



76 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



especially commended. Vol. iv. of Morley's English Wri- 
ters also is full of valuable material for the study of the 
poet. A voluminous work in Chaucer criticism is to be 
found in Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer (Harper, 1892, 
3 vols.). The Canterbury Tales, by Saunders, is full of 
very interesting comment. But above all, let the pupil be 
careful to read his Chaucer itself as the real subject of his 
study, always remembering that it is the author, and not the 
commentator, that he desires to know. Any single one of the 
authorities mentioned may prove sufficient for his purpose 
now. Let Shakespeare's Richard II. and King Henry' IV. 
be included. 

The natural beginning for a study of Chaucer's work is the 
The Pro- familiar Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Sup- 
logue. pose that the student, having become acquainted 
with the text of its 850 lines, first make a classification of 
the characters thus introduced. He will find representatives 
of the Chivalry of Chaucer's time, of the Church, the Pre 
fessions, the Gentry, of Commerce and Trade. Let him 
note the breadth of representation thus secured and consider 
the several classes in their types. Which of the individual 
characters are most favorably presented ? Point out some 
ironical touches in the portraitures. What is Chaucer's in- 
tent in lines 183, 251, 395, 438, 444, 648, 708 ? Find illus- 
trations of Chaucer's humor : what do you think of its 
quality ? Examine some of the descriptions which present 
the characters unfavorably. Is the poet severe in his cen- 
sure ? What is his method of suggesting our disapproval ? 
If you are familiar with Langland's Vision of Piers Plow- 
man, compare the methods of these two poets. Do you find 
in the Prologue any traces of Chaucer's love of nature as set 
forth in poetical comparisons ? Note lines 170, 268 : what 
similar comparisons do you find in the description of the 
Shipman, and elsewhere, particularly in the first eighteen 
verses of the poem. 

Now turning more directly to the text, notice some of 
these details : what is the precise date of the pilgrimage, as 
set forth in poetical language ? Compare lines 12-14 with 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



77 



the Wife o£ Bath's wandermgs, lines 463-466. Where was 
Southwark, and where Canterbury ? What was the signifi- 
cance of the name Tahard, given to the inn ? The company 
of pilgrims is recorded as " Wei nyne and twenty : " do you 
find this to be exact ? What do you think of Chaucer's 
" setting " of his poem as compared with Boccaccio in the 
Decameron ? It is impossible to suggest here a detailed study 
of the text, but the student should notice carefully some 
points in the language and vocabulary. For instance, licotcr, 
vertu, engendred, flour, are French words developed out of 
Latin forms : see how many words of similar origin are to 
be found in the first forty lines. Compare what Lowell says 
in his essay (My Study Windows, p. 257) upon Chaucer's 
diction. 

Holt and heeth, fowles, halives, are of Teutonic origin ; 
make a list of similar Saxon words in the same forty lines, 
and note especially those that have changed in form or 
usage since Chaucer's time. What is the precise meaning of 
corages (line 11) and corage (line 22), couthe (line 14) ? 
compare with can (line 210) and coude (line 467), and else- 
where. In what form does modern English retain this 
original meaning of the verb ? Explain the use of aventure 
(line 26), forward (line 33). What other word besides hos- 
telrye (line 23) does the poet use for inn ? Compare their 
etymology. 

Is Chaucer's Knyght to be taken as representing universally 
the chivalry of his day? What opportunities had the poet 
had to observe the character of knight and squire ? How 
far had this Knyght traveled according to account ? What 
is meant by the term vileinye (line 70), gentil (line 72) ? 
From the description of the Squyer, what seem to have been 
the duties of his rank ? Does the account of his accomplish- 
ments indicate a frivolous character ? How did the Yeman 
come to know so much of woodcraft ? Are you acquainted 
with Scott's picture of Locksley, the forester, in Ivanhoe? 
In these three portraits note some of the lines which are par- 
ticularly effective in picturesque quality : e. g. lines 89, 109. 
Try to discover Chaucer's remarkable gift in portraiture, so 



78 



THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



brief, yet so effective. What seems to be Cliaucer's feeling 
toward the Frioresse ? Her name is recorded : what other 
of the pilgrims are referred to thus personally ? Compare 
the account of her table manners with the extract, in Skeat's 
edition of the Prologue, from a contemporary book on eti- 
quette. See how much of suggestive description is contained 
in lines 151-162. It would be interesting to make a special 
study of the costuming of these pilgrims ; the poet gives 
many details. What ornaments, for example, are worn by 
the various characters ? From Chaucer's portraiture of the 
Monk and the Frere what should be our estimate of the 
classes thus represented ? Pick out suggestive passages that 
indicate their character, — some that are especially good in 
setting forth their personal appearance. Study the origin and 
force of the following words : venerye (line 166), chapel 
(line 171), cloistre (line 181), wood (line 184), pi'icasour 
(line 189), in good poynt (line 200), palfrey (line 207), 
overal (line 216) , penaunce (line 223), tappestere (line 241), 
heggestere (line 242), poraille (line povre (line 260). 

In the way already suggested, study the remaining por- 
traits ; numerous lines for side-study will appear. The 
guilds, the ordres foure, the practice of medicine, the Far- 
doner 's tricks, the recipes suggested by the Cook — com- 
ments upon these topics will be found in many of the texts. 
Words like catel (line 373), pur chas (line 256), achat (line 
571), ounces (line 677), persoitn (line 478), viage (line 723), 
avis (line 786), Withsaye (line 805), should be carefully 
examined; indeed a close dependence upon a glossary is 
absolutely essential to an intelligent reading of the poem : 
too many pupils lazily guess at the meaning of Chaucer's 
words. 

There is no opportunity in these suggestions to refer to 
pronunciation or to grammatical forms ; these matters must 
be studied with other aids, and will be found discussed in 
editions like that of Mather, already recommended. When 
these points are more or less familiar, some portions of the 
Frologue may be learned by heart and repeated often 
aloud. Effective passages may be selected anywhere, but 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



79 



the student should certainly commit the first twenty-seven 
lines of the poem, and parts, if not all, of Chaucer's descrip- 
tion of the Oxford clerk and the poore Fersoun of a toun.'' 
These are special gems. 

In proceeding with the study of this tale, remember that 
Chaucer appears now in a role slightly different Knight's 
from that assumed in the Prologue. Here we Tale, 
have the story-teller in actual fact, and it must be ours to 
appreciate the quality of the narrative as such, and to note 
the marks that make this narrative essentially Chaucerian. 
The tale itself is not original with Chaucer ; the basis of it 
is found in a romance by Boccaccio, but the treatment of 
motive, incident, and character is practically Chaucer's. A 
clear comparison between the English romance and the 
Italian story is to be found in Mather's introduction, pp. 
Ixi.-lxxiii. As we read, it will be natural to notice the 
entire appropriateness of ascribing this tale to the Knight, 
whose character, given in the prologue, is so consistent with 
the dignified and chivalric tone of the story. The characters 
of Theseus and Hypolita are met with elsewhere in English 
literature : are you acquainted with Shakespeare's poetical 
drama, A Midsummer Night 's Dream ? In studying this 
narrative, note where the introduction ends and the real 
story of Palamon and Arcite begins ; but in the introductory 
section notice the effective points in the account of the 

" Companye of ladies, tweye and tweye, 
Ech after other, clad in clothes blake," 

with their piteous cry and the quick response — 

" This g-entil duk down from his courser sterte 
With herte pitous, whan he herde hem speke," 

description of the war on Thebes, beginning (line 

" The rede statue of Mars with spere and targe, 
So shyneth in his white baner large, 
That alle tho feeldes glitteren up and doun," etc. 

Having reached the account of the finding Arcite and Pala- 
mon among the wounded, and their subsequent captivity. 



and in 
117) 



80 THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



what seems to be the prime motive of the story that would 
naturally develop out of such a situation ? Note in order the 
successive incidents that supply the narrative. Do these in- 
cidents occur naturally, or do they seem artificial ? With this 
in mind study carefully the account of the cousins' discovery 
of Emily in the garden ; their sentiments, as each expresses 
the effect of her beauty, and their subsequent quarrel (lines 
204-328). In the same way study the description of Emily 
(lines 175-197). Find other portions of narrative and de- 
scriptive writing in the poem, and point out special excel- 
lences or, what seem to you, defects. Note the forceful 
portraiture of Emetrius and Lygurge (lines 1270-1330). In 
your own words describe the general appearance of the lists, 
of which the poet furnishes such full details. Now write 
the story of the tournament as recounted in the poem. 
Characterize the narrative of Arcite's death and funeral: 
how are you impressed by the account ? Show the general 
fitness of the outcome in the light of Palamon and Arcite's 
prayers and vows before the encounter. Do you suppose 
that this appropriate issue of events just happens, or is 
this singular fulfillment of the prodigies only an evidence of 
a careful art which foresaw the coincidence before it came ? 
Point out any artistic details of this sort that you discover. 
What do you think of the portrait of King Theseus himself, 

— do you find " characterization " sufficient to outline a real 
personality ? Tell what sort of a man he was. What can 
you say for Emily, the heroine, — is her portraiture distinct ? 
Cite some passages that show the poet's love for nature and 
enjoyment of natural phenomena. Compare the descrip- 
tion of the sunrise (lines 633-638), and numerous single 
verses scattered through the poem. Here and there one 
comes on lines which seem to express the poet's own thought, 

— that give a glimpse of Chaucer's heart. For example, 
the sentiment (line 903), 

" For pitie renneth soone in gentil herte," 
is a favorite with the poet ; he uses it thrice elsewhere. A 
bit of experience is involved in the couplet (lines 1589- 
1590) 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



81 



"As sooth is sayd, elde hath greet avantage, 
In elde is both wisdom and usage." 

Somewhat humorously expressed is the truth (lines 1901- 
1902) 

" And certeinly, ther nature wol nat wirehe 
Farewel, physik ! go ber the man to chirche." 

The Knight's tale receives no further introduction than 
that afforded by the last thirteen verses of the The Nun's 
Prologue; inasmuch as the Nun's Priest is not Priest's 
formally presented in the Prologue, receiving 
scanty mention as one of Preestes thre in the retinue of the 
Prioress, it may be interesting to read the link-word which 
follows on conclusion of the Monk's tale and formally begins 
that of the Nonne Preest (lines 8420-8432) — 

" This sweete preest, this goodly man, Sir John." 

For a full account of the sources of this tale, see Mather's 
introduction. It is hardly necessary to suggest material for 
study in this admirable story of The Cok and Hen. The 
mock seriousness of this domestic epic is delightful. Chaun- 
tecleer and Pertelote are genuine " characters " in every sense 
of the word, and by no means confined in their peregrina- 
tions to this poure luldiues barnyard. Here is an excellent 
example of the poet's humor, pervasive and yet well in hand, 
to be read appreciatively and enjoyed. 



The development of English literature during the Anglo- 
Norman period is as follows : — 



The Rulebs. 


Romances. 


Chronicles. 


Moralizing Verse. 


William I. 

(106(3-87). 
Stephen 

(1135-54). 

Edward III. 
(1327-77). 

Richard 11. 
(1377-99). 


Norman-French 
Romance. 

Ang-lo-Norman 
Romance. 

King Horn (13th 
century). 

Mandeville's Tra- 
vels (1356). 

Troilus and Cri- 
sej/o?e (1380?). 

Confcssio Amantis 
(1385). 

Canterbury Tales 
(140(0- 


Anglo-Saxon Chro- 
nicle (to 1154). 

Wace's Brut 
(1155). 

Layamon's Brut 
(1205). 

Robert of Glouces- 
ter's Chronicle 
(1300?). 

(English was legal- 
ly recognized in 
1362.) 


Poema Morale 

(1160). 
Ormulum (1225?). 

Piers Plowman 
(1362). 

(Wyclif s Bible 
was completed 
about 1382.) 



CHAPTER III 



THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 

FKOM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 

I. The Fifteenth Century : The Renascence. 
II. The First Half of the Sixteenth Century : From the 
Accession of Henry VIII. (1509) to the Accession of 
Elizabeth (1558). 

III. Representative Prose and Verse in the Elizabethan 

Age. 

IV. The Development of the English Drama. 
V. William Shakespeare and his Successors. 

I. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY : THE RENASCENCE. 

The century immediately following that of Chaucer 
and his contemporaries is apparently one of the most 
unproductive in the history of English literature. It 
is to be recognized, however, as a time of preparation, 
and not without its important achievements. 

The fifteenth century was the century of the " new 
The Re- birth," or renascence, of learning and art in 
nascence. the life of the modern world. It was a period 
of invention and discovery, producing results which 
were momentous in subsequent history. New ideas 
poured in upon men's minds and greatly changed the 
manner of thinking in philosophy, art, literature, poli- 
tics, and religion. The whole of Europe was under 
the spell of this new-born spirit of light and progress, 
but the centre of greatest influence and the chief source 
of power was Italy, the home of Dante and Petrarch ; 



THE PRINTING-PRESS 



83 



of da Vinci, Eaphael, and Michelangelo ; of tlie Me- 
dici family, magnificent patrons of learning and art, 
and of hundreds of scholars whose names are less fa- 
miliar, but who created a taste for the literature and 
thought of the classic age and taught that literature in 
the schools of Padua, Bologna, Venice, and Florence. 
This Revival of Letters was stimulated by the fall of 
Constantinople in 1453, which sent swarms of Greek 
scholars westward into Europe, bearing precious manu- 
scripts of Greek philosophers and poets to quicken 
enthusiasm for the study of this new-old literature. 
In Germany the new spirit of freedom in thought pro- 
duced the Reformation, and the scholarship of Melanch- 
thon, Reuchlin, and Erasmus. In England these new 
ideas, heralded in the preceding century by Wyclif and 
Chaucer, were fostered and taught by Grocyn, Eras- 
mus, Colet, Ascham, and More. New colleges were 
established at Cambridge and Oxford, and public 
schools were founded here and there in the kingdom. 
As feudalism decayed, the rights of the untitled class 
were recognized and a new independence was given to 
the commoner. 

Most important of all the inventions that make this 
age remarkable, greatest of all inventions in the far- 
reaching effects of its use, is that which made 
possible the printing of books by means of Printing- 
movable types. The process of block-print- 
ing from wooden slabs on which were cut the letters 
of a single page had, to some extent, displaced the 
painful art of transcribing on parchment and vellum 
the exquisite copies of the earlier manuscripts ; but 
the use of separate types in the printing of books ap- 
pears to have been the invention of John Gutenberg, 
of the German city of Mainz, about 1450. In Ger- 
many and the Netherlands the first printers plied their 



84 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



art, and some time in the last quarter of the century, 
when the ruinous Wars of the Roses were approach- 
ing their conclusion, the Englishman, William Caxton, 
learned the practice of the craft, and introduced print- 
ing into England. 

Caxton was originally in the employ of a silk mer- 

„ chant in London, and had settled in the Low 

William „ . TT 1 1 

Caxton, Countries at Bruges. Here he became inter- 

1422 ?-91. gg|.g^ jjg^ ^^^£^ ^^^^^ -j^^-^^^ 

put through the press the first book printed in English, 
The Mecuyellof the History es of Troye. In 1476 Cax- 
ton returned to England with a press, the first in the 
kingdom, which he established at Westminster. The 
title of the first book from this press is the Dictes and 
Sayings of the Philosophers (1477). The name of 
this first English printer may well be honored. Not 
only was Caxton a translator of many texts, but his 
choice of works for publication is admirable and attests 
his literary instinct. In 1485 he printed a volume 

which had been completed fifteen years be- 
Thomas fore by an English writer of whom we know 
about ' almost nothing, — Malory's Morte Darthur^ 

a splendid collection of the tales of King 
Arthur and his knights, told in vigorous and melodi- 
ous English prose. 

Nearly one hundred volumes, altogether, were printed 
on Caxton's presses ; conspicuous among them two or 
three editions of The Canterbury Tales, and other works 
of Chaucer, besides the compositions of Lydgate and 
Gower, his contemporaries. 

Scotland as well as England has a part — and no 

unworthy one — in the story of the literature 
Scotoii common to them both. Early chroniclers 

among the Scotch had told in verse the ex- 
ploits of Bruce and Wallace, national heroes of their 




g Tim 6? foup^rc (tttQ ^ ^0 ano9 

2t fcm^C^ mat) out of^c ibac ibpt^ aSc 
;^tfc fe a matc^C it) a fojCspe 
% fat^G mai) ibo© ib^t^ ^j?c>i f^cp? 
7t fe^rxx 6utfl$c26 isl^cr ttoT) n) cfepj 

of fpccQr onb? WaeC Iba© s fait^gt 
!Xn5? of man^oD? gacae5>2 ^ ^^^i nought 

t^ntb tbas ^ «c^< a mctg mat) 
7lt\b2 offir rouff>« P^S^ ^ 
7tn?)2 fiiaft of «tyti^« amotigj o^ct t^gn^cd 
\to^i> ^ai tbc maoc out tca^^n^e^ 
g)« fa^i? t^u6 nolb fotdgng^s ftcuCg 

;fot 6g ttotbt^e 3 fBw? not Cgc 
S fatb not gm fo mcrg a wmpangc 

FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM CAXTON's SECOND EDITION OF 
CHAUCEK's canterbury tales, PRINTED ABOUT 1484 

(The text reproduced includes lines 747-764 of the Prologue, describing the Host 
and his hospitable welcome to the pilgrims gathered about his table. The artist did 
not succeed in introducing the entire company of nine and twenty guests who sat 
dowTi together at the Tabard, but we have no difficulty in recognizing the wortliy 
Knight and his son at the right of the Host, and Madame Eglentine, the lady Prior- 
ess, at his left. Next to the young Squire, with face turned more directly to the 
front, sits Chaucer himself.) 



86 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



rocky soil, just as the English rhymers of a contempo- 
rary or an earlier time had rehearsed the deeds of Eng- 
lish champions. But James I. was one of the earliest 
representatives of the land of Burns and Scott to grace 
our literature with the beauty and sweetness of genu- 
ine song. 

In 1405 James, who was then a boy of only eleven 
King years, became a state prisoner at the English 
1394-^' court. From that time till his release in 
1437. 1424 he remained in England, enjoying 
every privilege save that of freedom, and cultivating 
his love of music and of verse. While confined at 
Windsor Castle he saw from his window, one May 
morning, the beautiful daughter of the Duke of Som- 
erset walking in the castle garden ; and the love of the 
royal youth for this lady inspired The Kynge's Quhair 
(quire, book). This poem, consisting of 197 seven-line 
stanzas, is full of the influence of Chaucer and Gower, 
whose disciple James frankly avowed himself to be. 
From the king's use of this particular stanza form, it 
has since been called " rhyme royal ; " it has held a dis- 
tinguished place in the compositions of some later poets. 

Again, at the close of the century there were in Scot- 
Dunbar ^^.nd two poets of considerable imaginative 
and power and artistic skill whose work reflects 

Douglas. ^j^g spirit of this era, although the best of it 
appeared after 1500. These were William Dunbar, 
author of The Thistle and the Rose (1503) and The 
Golden Targe (1508) ; and Gavin Douglas, who wrote 
The Palace of Honor (1501) and translated Ovid and 
Vergil (1513). 

Of English versifiers there were in the first half of 
English the century two whose names are usually re- 
Poetry. corded : John Lydgate and Thomas Occleve, 
unskillful imitators of Geoffrey Chaucer. In the latter 



JOHN SKELTON 



87 



half of this period also lived Stephen Hawes, author of 
a long, laborious allegory, The Pastime of Pleasure. 
More noteworthy than the labored writings of these 
men are the rough rhymes and blunt wit of John 
Skelton, whose life extended over the first quarter of 
the sixteenth century, and whose verse forms a sig- 
nificant link between the old poetry and the new. 

A clergyman by profession, Skelton was endowed 
with a rough and ready wit which expressed john 
itself with both coarseness and vigor. He ^JIq""' 
studied at the two great universities and re- 1^29. 
ceived the purely academic honor of laureate from each. 
His scholarship was such that he was appointed tutor 
to the young prince, afterward King Henry VIH. The 
greater part of Skelton's verse consists of a rude jingle 
more indicative of ready wit than of poetic fire. He 
was better as a satirist than in any other role, and in 
that vein composed his Bowge \_Rewards~\ of Courte, 
Colyn Clout e^ and Why Cortie Ye not to Courte ? He 
directed his satires against corruption in Church and 
State, and even dared a vigorous attack on the powerful 
Wolsey, whose anger the poet escaped only by taking 
sanctuary at Westminster, where he died in 1529. Of 
his various effusions Skelton himself declares : — 

" Though my ryme be ragged 
Tattered and jagged, 
Rudely rain-beaten, 
Rust and moth-eaten, 
If ye take well therewith, 
It hath in it some pith." 

Perhaps this is the best that can be said for Skelton's 
poetry, although there are among his efforts a few com- 
positions that show real poetic merit. 

A distinct literary product of the fifteenth century, 
by far the most impressive illustration of genuine 



88 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



poetic power that it produced, is the voluminous col- 
The lection of Scotch and Border Ballads, the 

Ballads. greater part of which seem to have had their 
origin during this period. Folk poetry in the truest 
sense, these ballads represent the work of unknown 
authors. Their material is that which naturally im- 
presses itself on the popular mind : stirring chronicles 
of war, the pathetic and the romantic incidents of 
man's common experience, the mysterious occurrences 
that imply a supernatural source. The treatment is 
invariably simple and naiVe, while the very artlessness 
of the narrative appeals with unusual force to the imagi- 
nation and emotions of the reader. Of one of the most 
famous ballads. Chevy Chase^ Sir Philip Sidney de- 
clared that its recital moved his heart more than a 
trumpet. Familiar among these ballads, at least by 
name, are those Lytell Gestes of Hohin Hood which 
relate the bold deeds of that " good outlaw " of Sher- 
wood, and of his comrades. Little John and Friar Tuck. 
The pathetic songs of The Two Children in the Wood, 
Patient Grissel, and The JVutbrowne Maid, belong to 
another interesting class of these folk poems, while the 
weird ballads of The Twa Corhies and The Cruel Sister 
illustrate another. 

A famous collection of these ballads was brought to- 
gether by Bishop Percy, and published in 1765 under 
the title of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Po- 
etry. Sir Walter Scott, who was irresistibly attracted 
toward such material, gathered a similar collection, 
published in 1802, as Minstrelsy of the Scottish Bor- 
der. An exhaustive study of these ballads is found in 
Professor Child's English and Scottish Popular Bal- 
lads.'^ 

1 The ballads are included (in four volumes) in the Riverside 
Edition of the British Poets. An excellent introduction to the 



SIR THOMAS MORE 



89 



II. THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY. 
To the Accession of Elizabeth, 1558. 

However sluggish its development through the pe- 
riod just considered, in the time of Henry VIII. (1509- 
47) English literature took a new start. In both prose 
and verse the spirit of the Renascence is clearly seen, 
and it is not difficult to trace the forces which reached 
their climax in the creations of the Elizabethan age. 
The impulse of the New Learning is especially distinct 
in the prose of Sir Thomas More, William Tyndale, 
and Roger Ascham. The development of rnodern Eng- 
lish verse is found in the poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt 
and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. 

Among the scholars who gave distinction intellec- 
tually to the reign of Henry VTIL, there is 
none better known for integrity as well as wis- Thomas 
dom than Sir Thomas More, the author of i48o- 
Utopia. More was born in London in 1480. 
He studied law, but was fonder of his Greek texts 
than of his legal practice. Nevertheless he advanced 
rapidly at court, and on the death of Wolsey was ap- 
pointed Lord High Chancellor by the king. But the 
troublous years of Henry's reign soon followed ; and in 
the midst of events which caused the wreck of many 
a career. Sir Thomas More fell a victim to his religious 
convictions, and paid with his life the penalty of oppos- 
ing Henry's will. 

More's Life of Edward V. (1513 ; printed 1557) 
is the first essay in careful history that we possess. His 
Utopia (written in Latin, and printed at Louvain in 
1516 ; translated into English by Ralph Robinson in 
1551) is one of our earliest studies in the field of 

study of ballad literature will be found in Gummere's Old English 
Ballads (Ginn). 



90 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



social science. The narrative tells of a wonderful coun- 
try, the State of Nowhere, — a land where religion is 
left to the individual conscience, and war is .considered 
an evil ; where citizens study the problems of labor 
and crime, and seek how to promote the interests of 
public health, education, and comfort. The Utopia 
was a direct product of the New Learning, and was in- 
stinct with the genius of common sense. Dream though 
it was, much of its theory has worked its way into the 
constitution of modern England ; and the book has in- 
spired many imitators in this field. 

Another industrious scholar, exactly contemporane- 
wiiiiam ous with More, but one who, in the struggle 
1490-^^' attendant on the Reformation, was enrolled 
1536. upon the Protestant side, was William Tyn- 
dale. Tyndale was a second Wyclif. Early in life he 
avowed his sympathy with Luther and his followers, 
declaring his purpose to make it possible for every 
English ploughboy to know the Scriptures well. His 
translation of the New Testament was made in Ant- 
werp and was printed in 1525. The rapid circulation 
of Tyndale's version through Europe and England 
roused bitter opposition from the adherents of the pope, 
— an opposition in which Sir Thomas More was con- 
spicuous, — and the reformer was compelled to find 
asylums in various lands. In these retreats he contin- 
ued his translation of the Old Testament ; but while his 
work was still fragmentary, Tyndale was betrayed to 
his enemies ; after imprisonment for about two years, 
he was strangled at the stake, and his body was burned. 

It was Tyndale's version, made complete by additions 
from the work of Miles Coverdale, Bishop of 
English Exeter, — who, in 1535, published the first 
printed translation of the entire Bible, — that 
formed the basis of the revised translation which ap- 



THE ENGLISH BIBLE 



91 



peared under Archbishop Cranmer's sanction in 1540, 
— usually called Cranmers Bible, or, from its size. The 
Great Bible. Thus the work begun in the quiet rec- 
tory at Lutterworth by John Wyclif, first of English 
reformers, proceeded under conditions sometimes hos- 
tile, sometimes friendly. The history of the English 
Bible is indeed full of intense dramatic interest, for in 
the record of our literature no other book has held such 
intimate relation to the very lives and hearts of the 
English people. There are memories of old translators 
followed in death by the savage bitterness of persecu- 
tion which in life they had escaped ; of the rummag- 
ing of students' chambers, the official search through 
the mansions of the rich, and the humbler homes of 
peasants and mechanics, to find the sacred copies which 
had been proscribed ; pictures of bonfires in the church- 
yard of Saint Paul's, with Wolsey sternly looking on, 
magnificently dressed in the purple and scarlet of his 
ceremonial robes, while in the midst of a great crowd, 
some jeering though others wept, the confiscated Bibles 
were emptied from huge baskets upon the flames. Yet 
fifteen years later, still in Henry's time. Bibles were, by 
royal order, placed in the churches of England, and 
readers appointed who read in loud, clear tones to the 
thousands that came at stated times to hear the word 
of God. The famous Geneva Bible, beloved by the 
Puritans, in the preparation of which Miles Coverdale, 
an exile in his old age, had assisted, was published in 
1560 ; and several translations less noted were in use 
during Elizabeth's reign. It was, however, in the time 
of her successor that the Authorized, or King James, 
version was produced. In its preparation fifty of the 
most prominent scholars were engaged. At Cambridge, 
at Oxford, and at Westminster, they worked in groups, 
and met at intervals to compare and criticise their work. 



92 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



The labor of translation was finished in three years, 
and in 1611 the Bible was published with an address 
to the king. Again the work of Tyndale was practi- 
cally the foundation upon which these new translators 
built, and it is thus to this early reformer that we are in- 
debted largely for the splendid diction of that version 
of the Scriptures which is still in common use, and 
which more than any other book has inspired the style 
of our best English prose. 

A particularly attractive figure among the scholarly 
Roger Englishmen of this time was Roger Ascham, 
Ascham, generally known as the tutor of the Lady 
1515-68. j^jie Grey and of the Princess, afterward 
Queen, Elizabeth. Dependent upon friendly assistance 
in securing an education, Ascham took his bachelor's 
degree at Cambridge in 1531, and became a fellow of 
the University in the following year. The young stu- 
dent was soon recognized as an ardent enthusiast for 
the New Learning, and his room became the resort for 
many who came to hear him read and explain the 
Greek. But Roger Ascham was more than a book- 
worm ; like Geoffrey Chaucer he was willing to drop 
his book and his devotion for the relaxation and exer- 
cise of the open air ; and when the king returned from 
a campaign in France in 1545, Ascham presented to 
him a work on archery entitled Toxophilus^ in which, 
following the method of dialogue, he sets forth the ad- 
vantages of this exercise to England, morally as well 
as physically, and because of the importance of arch- 
ery at that period, for purposes of national defence. 
Pleased with the essay, Henry bestowed upon its au- 
thor a pension of ten pounds. 

In 1563, during a conversation with several gentle, 
men of note, some expression of his opinion on the sub- 
ject of education led to the writing of Ascham's School- 



ROGER ASCHAM 



93 



master^ — a work which reveals a wise sympathy with 
the miiicls to be taught and trained. 

Ascham's personality must have been as amiable as 
it was studious. Tactful and genial, he held the confi- 
dence of four sovereigns, some of whom were not noted 
for their constancy. He was rewarded by Henry, and 
honored by Edward ; though a Protestant, and never 
suspected of undue subserviency in the matter of reli- 
gious conviction, he was retained by Mary in the posi- 
tion of Latin Secretary, to which he had been appointed 
previous to her reign ; and under Elizabeth he contin- 
ued in that responsible office, 

Ascham has been described as a great Greek scholar : 
his position as Latin Secretary for many years attests 
his proficiency in that language also ; but it is as a writer 
of English, remarkable for its many excellencies of 
style, that this author is to be remembered now. The 
following passage from ToxopMlus^ very near the close 
of the second book, will serve to illustrate the quality 
of Ascham's composition, and may be taken as a good 
example of the best sixteenth-century prose : — 

" For having a man's eye always on his mark, is the only 
way to shoot straight ; yea, and I suppose, so ready and 
easy a way, if it be learned in youth, and confirmed with 
use, that a man shall never miss therein. . . . Some men 
wonder why, in casting a man's eye at the mark, the hand 
should go straight : surely if he considered the nature of a 
man's eye, he would not wonder at it : for this I am certain 
of, that no servant to his master, no child to his father, is 
so obedient, as every joint and piece of the body is to do 
whatsoever the eye bids. The eye is the guide, the ruler, 
and the succorer of all the other parts. The hand, the 
foot, and other members, dare do nothing without the eye, 
as doth appear on the night and dark corners. The eye 
is the very tongue wherewith wit and reason doth speak to 



94 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



every part of the body, and the wit doth not so soon signify 
a thing by the eye, as every part is ready to follow, or 
rather prevent [anticipate] the bidding of the eye." 

Under the impulse of the various influences now so 
The New active, poetry began in the time of Henry 
Poetry. VIII. to respond to the spirit of the Renas- 
cence, and to assume the form and manner that we 
associate with modern English verse. We find the 
actual beginnings in the work of Wyatt and Surrey, 
whose names are appropriately joined in common re- 
ference. Although Surrey was some fifteen years 
younger than Wyatt, the two were brought together 
by friendship, as well as by a common taste for letters, 
and the younger poet followed the elder to some extent 
as his disciple in the new art. Both were strongly in- 
fluenced by contact with Italian literature, and both 
adopted the models of Italian verse. Wyatt introduced 
the sonnet^ and Surrey was the first of English poets to 
use blank verse. The history of both men is closely 
involved with that of the period in which they lived, 
and their work is charged with the spirit of that ro- 
mantic time. 

Wyatt was a native of Kent. His education he re- 
Sir ceived at Cambridge, where he took the mas- 

'^^^l^ ter's degree in 1520. Introduced at court b*y 
1503-42. his father, who had enjoyed the favor of 
Henry VII. and continued to hold responsible relations 
to the court of his successor, young Thomas Wyatt 
received early recognition from Henry VIII. In 1526 
he was in the suite of Sir Thomas Cheney, a member 
of the privy council dispatched on a mission to the 
king of France ; in the next year he joined the com- 
pany of Sir John Russell, special ambassador to Rome, 
and with that nobleman traveled in Italy. At various 
times Wyatt was employed thus upon the king's busi- 



SIR THOMAS WYATT 



95 



ness, and for two years served as resident ambassador 
at the court of Charles V. in Spain. Such intercourse 
made Wyatt perfectly familiar with the best literature 
of his age, and the natural influence of such contact is 
seen in his verse. Wyatt's fortunes suffered now and 
then, as did those of most men who held prominent 
place at Henry's court ; he was at least twice a pris- 
oner in the Tower, once in serious peril of his life, but 
rather because of jealous enemies than of his sovereign's 
displeasure. All these experiences of the uncertain 
tenure of high estate are echoed in Wyatt's more seri- 
ous verse. But the king's favor stood the courtier-poet 
in good stead ; the final illness which resulted in his 
death was contracted while upon a mission of honor 
attending the reception of royal guests. 

Wyatt was a maker of verse all his life. In his early 
poems there is more of rough rhyming than of melody ; 
but he did compose some charming measures, as, for 
example, in one lyric often quoted : — 

" Blame not my Lute ! for he must sound 
Of this or that as liketh me ; 
For lack of wit the Lute is bound 
To give such tunes as pleaseth me ; 
Though my songs be somewhat strange, 
And speak such words as touch thy change, 
Blame not my Lute ! ' ' 

In great variety of rhyme and metre Sir Thomas ex- 
perimented with the possibilities of our English versifi- 
cation, incidentally clearing the way for many a greater 
poet after him. Besides his numerous " songs and 
sonnets," mainly love poems, Wyatt wrote three excel- 
lent satires : Of the Mean and Sure Estate^ Of the 
Courtier's Life^ and How to Use the Court and 
Himself therein. He also attempted a paraphrase of 
the Penitential Psalms. His most important contri- 
bution to literature was his adoption of the sonnet, a 



96 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



poetical form used by the Italian poet Petrarch, and 
in various modifications familiar in all literatures of a 
later time.^ 

The following poem may serve to illustrate the poet's 
metres, and also the common theme of his song : — 

"The Lover dbscribeth his being stricken with Sight of 
HIS Love. 

" The lively sparks that issue from those eyes, 
Against the which there vaileth no defence, 
Have piere'd my heart, and done it none offence, 
With quaking- pleasure more than once or twice. 
Was never man could any thing devise, 
Sunbeams to turn with so great vehemence 
To daze man's sight as by their bright presence 
Dazed am I ; much like unto the guise 
Of one stricken with dint of lightning, 
Blind with the stroke, and crying here and there ; 
So call I for help, I not [know not] when nor where, 
The pain of my fall patiently bearing : 

For straight after the blaze, as is no wonder, 
Of deadly noise hear I the fearful thunder." 

The love poetry of this period is not to be taken too 
seriously. Dante's Beatrice and Petrarch's Laura 
were reduplicated many times in the fancy of the 
Elizabethan poets, while Wyatt and Surrey both seem 
to have given an English model to these so-called 
Amourists. There is a possibility, however, that Wy- 
att, in the sonnet quoted and in other poems more 
direct in their allusion, is addressing no less a person- 
age than the fascinating Anne Boleyn. 

Surrey, who with Wyatt has the distinction of head- 

1 The sonnet structure should be well studied. It is deemed the 
most perfect of verse arrangements, and has been employed with vary- 
ing success by all the greater — and most of the lesser — poets since 
Wyatt's day. The sonnet by Wordsworth On the Sonnet should be 
read by pupils as an ingenious exercise in this form of versification. 
Refer also to The Sonnet, its Origin, Structure, etc., by Charles Tom- 
linson (Murray). 



EARL OF SURREY 



97 



ing the " courtly makers " of the next three reigns, has 
generally received the larger share of honor Henry 
as a versifier. Possibly Wyatt has been un- Howard, 
derrated somewhat in this comparison, but Surrey, 
Surrey's verse has more ease and elegance, and ^^^^-i?. 
his metres are more correct than Wyatt's, if the latter 
is to be judged by his weakest productions. Surrey 
was born about 1518, the son of the Duke of Norfolk. 
Like Wyatt he was popular at court, and like the elder 
poet also he enjoyed extended visits in France and Italy. 
In 1544 the Earl served as marshal of the army in- 
vading France, and in the following year commanded 
at Guisnes and Boulogne. Meeting with defeat, Sur- 
rey was superseded, and was afterward, for some indis- 
cretion of speech, imprisoned at Windsor. Not so 
successful as Wyatt in holding the royal favor, the 
Earl of Surrey, together with his father, fell a victirp? 
to the irascibility of Henry's last years. Only a few 
days before the death of the king, Surrey was executed 
for treason, on a charge of having quartered the arms 
of Edward the Confessor on his shield, — a fact which 
was distorted into a design against the throne. 

Surrey's work is less voluminous than Wyatt's ; it 
includes sonnets, poems in various metres, paraphrases 
of Ecclesiastes and some of the Psalms^ and a trans- 
lation in blank verse of the second and fourth books 
of Vergil's ^neid. The Lady Geraldine, whose 
identity has not been satisfactorily determined, is the 
fair one to whom Surrey's love songs are addressed. 
The following will show the spirit of his verse, and 
may be compared with the sonnet already quoted from 
his friend : — 

" Descbiption and Praise of his Love Geraldine. 
' ' From Tuscane came my Lady's worthy race ; 
Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat. 



98 



FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



The western isle whose pleasant shore doth face 
Wild Camber's cliffs, did give her lively heat. 
Foster' d she was with milk of Irish breast: 
Her sire an Earl ; her dame of Prince's blood. 
From tender years in Britain doth she rest, 
With King-es child ; where she tasteth costly food. 
Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyen : 
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight. 
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine ; 
And Windsor, alas ! doth chase me from her sight. 
Her beauty of kind ; her virtues from above : 
Happy is he that can obtain her love ! " ^ 

The works of these two poets were not written for 
Tottei's the pubHc eye ; they circulated in manuscript 
Siyl^^ only from hand to hand among the friends 
1557. who composed the courtly circle in which 
these writers moved. It was not until 1557 that the 
"songs and sonnets" of Wyatt and Surrey appeared 
in print, forming the larger part of a collection known 
as TotteVs Miscellany^ which included the poems of 
several other writers, some of whom are still untraced. 
Tottei's publication was the first of a numerous series 
of such volumes put forth by enterprising publishers, 
indicating the growing love of poetry, and preserving 
some worthy compositions which might otherwise have 
been lost. 

III. KEPRESENTATIVE PROSE AND VERSE IN THE 
ELIZABETHAN AGE. 

The man who by common consent has been selected 
sir as the choicest type of Elizabethan chivalry is 

Sidney brave and courtly gentleman, Sir Philip 

1554-86. Sidney. Among all the brilliant circle that 
waited upon the queen, there was none more gifted or 
more admirable than he. Sidney was born at Pens- 
hurst, in Kent. He attended both universities, and 

1 The poems of Wyatt and Surrey, with a memoir of each, are pub- 
lished in the Riverside Edition by Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 



SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 



99 



spent three years in travel on the Continent. He was 
in Paris at the time of the Huguenot massacres, and 
narrowly escaped death on the fearful day of St. Bar- 
tholomew. Returning to England in his twenty-first 
year, the young noble was introduced at court by his 
uncle, the famous Leicester, and quickly charmed the 
fancy of the queen, who referred to him as " the jewel 
of her dominions " and showered him with her favors. 
But Sidney was as high-spirited as he was gallant, and 
offended by the inconsistencies and fickleness of Eliza- 
beth, he withdrew after some five years of the cour- 
tier's life to the estate of his sister, the Countess of 
Pembroke, at Wilton. Later he was again at court ; 
was knighted in 1583 ; in 1585 was ordered to accom- 
pany the unfortunate expedition of Leicester into the 
Netherlands, and the year following received his death- 
wound in a chivalrous charge beneath the walls of 
Zutphen. 

Like both Wyatt and Surrey, whose careers in some 
respects had been prototypes of his own. Sir Philip 
Sidney had found leisure at court, or in the retirement 
of Penshurst and Wilton, to cultivate the literary art 
in various fields. About 1580 he wrote a Defence of 
Poesy ^ notable as the first true essay in criticism in 
our language. He was also the author of a series of 
sonnets and songs entitled Astrophel and Stella, 
Although not published until 1591, these poems were 
written at intervals following the year 1581, when the 
poet suddenly discovered his affection for Penelope 
Devereux, daughter of the Earl of Essex, who in that 
year wedded a nobleman of the court. There seems 
to be no question of the sincerity of the passion re- 
hearsed in these love poems, one hundred and twenty 
in all ; and they have taken their place with the finest 
compositions of this sort in our literature. Besides 



L.ufC. 



100 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



this group of passionate love sonnets, Sir Philip Sidney 
left an elaborate pastoral romance entitled Arcadia, 
This voluminous work, which may be taken as typical 
of numerous efforts in the field of prose fiction belong- 
ing to this time, was never designed for publication. 
In the year 1580 Sidney had begun its composition 
solely for the diversion of his sister, the Countess, 
charging her to destroy the manuscript as it was read ; 
but four years after Sidney's death The Countess of 
Pembrohe' s Arcadia was published at London. It 
became the most popular romance of the day, inspir- 
ing many imitators, and, like Lyly's Eii'p'hues^ even 
setting a model of conversational form among the 
ladies and gentlemen of Elizabeth's court. 

Hardly less brilliant than Sidney, and even more ver- 
satile, Sir Walter Raleigh, the navigator 'of strange 
seas, soldier, explorer, colonizer, accomplished gentle- 
man of the court, lived to its full the eventful life 
so characteristic of his age. Born in Devonshire, edu- 
gij cated at Oxford, Raleigh began his adven- 

^aleigii tui'ous career at seventeen years of age as a 
1552- ' volunteer in the cause of the French Protest- 
ants. Later he was a prominent figure in 
many of the daring enterprises which give distinction to 
the time, and was with the fleet which crushed the Great 
Armada in 1588. The tradition of his romantic intro- 
duction to Elizabeth, when he is said to have thrown 
his rich plush cloak upon the wet shore at Greenwich 
that the flattered queen might walk with unsoiled slip- 
per, whether fact or fiction, is thoroughly characteristic 
of the man and of the age. Raleigh quickly rose in 
favor. A royal grant of 12,000 acres in Ireland made 
him a neighbor of Edmund Spenser, and furnished an 
opportunity for the interesting friendship celebrated 
1 See page 124. 



SIR WALTER RALEIGH 



101 



by the poet oi The Faerie Qiieene. Under the rule 
of James, Raleigh found only ingratitude and mis- 
fortune. For thirteen years a prisoner in the Tower 
under charges of treason, he was released, made an 
unfortunate expedition to the Orinoco in search of 
gold, returned in disappointment and disgrace, and 
shortly after, was beheaded upon the old-time charge ; 
Sir Francis Bacon was conspicuously active in the 
proceedings against him. 

During the period of his long imprisonment Raleigh 
began a voluminous History of the World, his 
The work starts with the Creation, as was cus- Works, 
tomary among the early historians, and closes with 
the second Macedonian War, B. c. 168. It is learned 
and eloquent, and is filled with contemplations and 
comparisons inspired by the men and the events dis- 
cussed. The shadow of his own misfortune falls at 
times upon its pages ; and the conclusion of the His- 
tory takes the form of an apostrophe to Death, which 
mav serve to suo-o^est the serious tone of the work, and 
also illustrate the author's style : — 

"Oh, eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none 
could advise, thou hast persuaded ; what none hath dared, 
thou hast done ; and whom all the world hath flattered, 
thou only hast cast out of the world, and despised ; thou 
hast drawn together ah the far-stretched greatness, aU the 
pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it over 
with these two narrow words — Hie Jacet.'" 

Besides his History^ Raleigh wrote The Discovery 
of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana 
(1596), a narrative of his voyage to the Orinoco;^ 
various other " accounts ; " and many poems, some of 
which were of merit sufficient to draw from Spenser a 

^ Published in CasselVs National Library, ten cents. 



102 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



complimentary allusion to Raleigh as the " Summer's 
Nightingale." 

The climax in that development of English poetry 
Edmund which gives such lustre to the Elizabethan 
Spenser, age is found in the work of Edmund Spen- 
ser, to whom Charles Lamb gave the title of 
" The Poet's Poet." Born in London, as was Chau- 
cer before him, and Milton, who was later to succeed 
him as a master in the field of epic poetry, he entered 
into few of the comfortable advantages which enriched 
the boyhood of those poets. His parents were poor, al- 
though connected, as the poet tells us, with " an house 
of ancient fame." 

His name is mentioned among those of six poor 
scholars of the Merchant Tailors' School who received 
assistance from a generous country squire ; and in 1569 
we find him entered at the University of Cambridge as 
a sizar, which means that he earned his way by serv- 
ing in the dining-hall, and performing other duties of a 
like character. At the University began the friendship 
with Gabriel Harvey, a fellow student, who probably 
introduced the poet to Sidney and the Earl of Leices- 
ter. In 1576 Spenser left Cambridge and found some 
employment in the north of England ; and here he 
first showed the quality of his poetic gifts. 

Spenser's first important composition was a set of 
twelve eclogues, one for each month of the year. 
The Shop- ^^^^^ published in 1579, the work was dedi- 
herd's cated to Sir Philip Sidney, between whom 
Calendar. Spenser an intimate friendship had al- 

ready been formed. It is interesting to see the influ- 
ence of the New Learning in Spenser's work. The 
spirit of Yergil and of Theocritus speaks again through 
the classical machinery of pastoral eclogue, a form of 
poetry which at once laid hold of the pleased imagina- 



EDMUND SPENSER 



103 



tion of the age ; indeed, so attractive did tliis Arca- 
dian setting appear, that in all forms of imaginative 
composition, in prose romance, and in dramatic poetry, 
the loves and woes of complaining shepherds seemed a 
universal theme by which to rouse the sentimental in- 
terest of readers. Milton in his Lycidas gave a tone 
of serious dignity to the pastoral. And more than a 
hundred years after Spenser's day we find the same 
machinery used in The Pastorals of Alexander Pope. 
But The Shepherd 's Calendar was full of the limpid 
sweetness of Spenser's verse, and marked the highest 
reach of English poetry since Chaucer. Its quality was 
recognized at once ; and the poet was duly honored by 
the friends secured through Sidney's interest. 

In 1580 Spenser was appointed private secretary 
to Earl Grey of Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland ; and 
thenceforth Ireland continued to be the poet's home. 
The country was in rebellion, and conditions were any- 
thing but pleasant. The private secretary embodied 
his own reflections in a pamphlet called A in 
VieiD of the Present State of Ireland (not 
printed until 1633), which shows sufficiently the bitter 
harshness of the time. Lord Grey was recalled two 
years after his appointment, but Spenser was retained 
in various official positions, and in 1588 was settled at 
Kilcolman Castle in County Cork. In spite of sur- 
roundings so unfavorable to a work of pure imagina- 
tion, Spenser had been engaged throughout his resi- 
dence in Ireland upon his great epic. According to a 
letter to Harvey, this poem had been begun before 
Spenser left England in 1580. By 1589 three books 
of the epic had been completed, and in that year were 
shown to Sir Walter Baleigh, who was now a neigh- 
bor of the poet, holding forfeitures on the same estate. 
In the company of Raleigh, Spenser now came back to 



104 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



London to lay his poem at the feet of the queen whose 
praises he, more sweetly than any other, had sung. A 
pension of X50 was bestowed upon the poet, and he 
returned to Ireland to celebrate his visit in the pasto- 
ral Colin Clout 's Come Home Again, 

More than any other work of that age, perhaps, 
The Spenser's masterpiece is typical of the ro- 

Paerie mantic spirit which characterized England in 
Queene. j^^^ decades of the sixteenth century. 

The political significance in some portions of the alle- 
gory, as, for example, the attempt to portray Sidney, 
Raleigh, Lord Grey, and other noblemen in the heroes 
of the several cantos ; the figuring forth of the person 
of the queen herself in the character of Gloriana ; 
and the presentation of the false Duessa as typical of 
Mary Stuart, — this is less noteworthy than the gen- 
eral atmosphere of ideal chivalry and moral struggle 
which was strikingly in keeping with the thoughts and 
passions of England in the Elizabethan age. In the 
person of Arthur, the poet set forth his ideal of per- 
fect manhood, and designed in the twelve books of 
his work, as planned, to describe successively the qual- 
ity of his hero in each of the moral virtues as then 
defined. The greatness of this great poem, however, 
is not due to the complicated subtilties of the allegory 
so much as to the extraordinary charm of these wind- 
ing paths and byways through which the poet leads us 
in the fairyland of his dream. Although the length 
of even this half-completed work, and the unavoidable 
monotony of these unvarying stanzas, do not encourage 
continuous reading. The Faerie Queene still holds its 
place, one of the greater masterpieces of our literature, 
a noble epic, rich in imagination and in fancy, ex- 
pressed in lines which for softness and melody have 
never been surpassed. 



MINOR POEMS 



105 



Spenser's early poems were published under the title 
of Complaints in 1591. Besides The Faerie jj^^qj 
Qiieene, his later works include several ele- Poems, 
gies ; the Amoretti, or love sonnets ; four Hymns in 
honor of love and beauty, heavenly love and heavenly 
beauty ; the exquisite EpitJialamion, or song in honor 
of his marriage in 1594 ; and another spousal verse, 
the Prothalamion. His lament upon the death of 
Sidney, entitled Astrophel^ is the finest of his elegies. 
In the pastoral manner he begins : — 

" A gentle shepheard borne in Arcady, 
Of gentlest race that ever sheplieard bore, 
About the gTassie bancks of Haemony 
Did keepe his sheep, his litle stock and store : 
Full carefully he kept them day and night, 
In fairest fields ; and Astrophel he hight. 

" Young Astrophel, the pride of shepheards praise, 
Young Astrophel, the rusticke lasses love : 
Far passing all the pastors of his dales, 
In all that seemly shepheard might behove. 
In one thing onely f ayling of the best. 
That he was not so happie as the rest/' 

In 1595 Spenser came again to England, bringing 
three more books of The Faerie Queene. For ^ast 
a year he remained the guest of the Earl of Years. 
Essex, at this period the favorite of the capricious 
Elizabeth. The new literature was now in hand. 
Shakespeare had produced his early plays, including 
A 3Iidsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Ju- 
liet. Ben Jonson was already on the stage ; and 
Francis Bacon, just about publishing the first edition 
of his famous Essays, was enjoying the patronage of 
Spenser's host. It is inconceivable that the poet failed 
to enter and enjoy the society of these men. In 1598, 
after the poet had returned to Ireland, occurred a 
fierce outbreak of the Irish rebels, which involved the 



106 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



district of Spenser's residence. Kilcolman was at- 
tacked and burned, and the unfortunate poet and his 
family were compelled to flee for their lives. Near the 
close of the year, Spenser arrived in London in pro- 
found distress, and in January, 1599, died at an inn. 
He was buried near Chaucer in the Abbey, and was 
mourned as the greatest of English poets. 

The Riverside Edition of this poet, edited in three vol- 
umes by Francis J. Child, is an authoritative text for the 
student's purpose. The Globe Edition (Macmillan) con- 
tains the works of Spenser in one volume. The Life of 
Spenser in the English Men of Letters Series is by Church. 

For study, take the first two cantos of Book I. of The 
Sugges- Faerie Queene. Read " A Letter of the Authors " 
tlons for to Sir Walter Raleigh, expounding his intention 
Study. allegory. What is an allegory'^ How 

many interpretations may be permitted of this poem ? Who 
are the heroes of the first six books ? What virtues are 
typified by them? How does the poet devise to exhibit 
King Arthur as the quintessence of all the virtues ? Ex- 
plain the political allegory so far as you can. 

Examine the structure of the Spenserian stanza, — one of 
the most perfect stanza forms known. Notice the rhyme 
order : a — b — a — b — b — c — b — c — c'. Here we have 
nine verses which would fall into three separate groups did 
not the repetition of a rhyme bind the parts together. Thus 
we have a long stanza saved from monotony by the introduc- 
tion of new rhymes, and secure in its unity because of the 
repetition of the "b " rhyme. A very effective close for the 
stanza is found in the last verse, which is longer by two syl- 
lables than the other verses ; this twelve-syllable verse is 
called an Alexandrine. This peculiar arrangement of verses 
was found by adding the Alexandrine to the stanza used by 
Chaucer in his Monk's Tale. Most of the later poets have 
employed this Spenserian stanza : name some of the promi- 
nent poems in which it appears. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY. 107 



Read several stanzas of the epic aloud ; try to determine 
for yourself what elements impart the softness and melodi- 
ousness to the verse. Note the vowel sounds ; the effect of 
the consonants in combination. Point out the liquids, the 
long-drawn syllables like muse, deeds, meane, etc. : what is 
the effect on the ear ? Note the repetition of a sound in 
certain lines, as " Me, all to meane, the sacred muse areeds " 
(Introd. to canto I. 1-7). What is the allusion in this stanza ? 

Now, in reading canto I., try to perceive the beauty of 
rhythm and melody that have made the poem a delight to 
the ear. Give a thought to the poet's imagination which 
with such felicity invents so wonderful an array of images 
and incidents. Examine the details of the narrative. Ex- 
plain the allegory in the first stanza : the shield ; the gravity, 
boldness, and eagerness of the knight ; the lady and her equip- 
ment. Why does she lead a lamb ? Why is she attended by 
the dwarf ? What is the significance of the storm, the wood, 
the battle ? 

Make a list of peculiar verbal forms, obsolete words, etc. 
What is the meaning of the y in ydrad, yclad ? Why did 
the poet choose these forms, which were out of use even in 
his day ? Note the images, especially such continued ones 
as are found in stanzas XXI. and XXIII. Where are the 
models that suggest them ? 

Do not overlook the classical allusions, e. g. in XXXVI., 
XXXVII., XXXIX. You will find in Book VI. of the 
j^neid the original of SjDenser's description of " Morpheus' 
house " (XXXIX.-XLL). Compare these stanzas with 
Thomson's Castle of Indolence and Tennyson's The Lotos 
Eatei'S, with special reference to the dreamy languor of the 
measure. Spenser declares his indebtedness to Chaucer: 
what evidence of this do you discover ? 

Why has the title "The Poets' Poet" been given to 
Spenser ? 

Of the many minor authors who might be enumer- 
ated as contributors to the literature of the sixteenth 
century, the following prose writers are most worthy 



108 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



of mention. They were all theologians, and men of 
Minor large influence in their generation. John 
Authors. Knox (1505-72), a bold and uncompromis- 
ing champion of the Protestant cause, more famous for 
his public sermons than for his formal publications, 
wrote a History of the Scottish Reformation. John 
Fox (1517-87), a graduate of Oxford, compiled the 
Booh of Martyrs^ Si, work of extraordinary influence in 
the religious controversies amid which Puritan England 
was developed. Author of many published discourses, 
which were marked by great force of character and 
vigorous expression, was Hugh Latimer (1470- 
1555), a convert to Protestantism, who suffered mar- 
tyrdom by burning in the time of Mary. It was Lati- 
mer who, while enduring the agony of the flames, cried 
out to his fellow sufferer, " Be of good cheer, Master 
Ridley, and play the man ; we shall this day light such 
a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall 
never be put out." One other writer in the last quar- 
ter of the century, Richard Hooker (1553-1600), 
claims attention for the unusual excellence of his style, 
as seen in the treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity, a de- 
fense of the English ecclesiastical system. Although 
of less human interest than the essays of Raleigh or 
Bacon, this work is regarded as one of the best exam- 
ples of stately English prose belonging to the time. 

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA. 

One cannot very well appreciate the remarkable 
display of creative power in the works of Marlowe, 
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and their contemporaries, 
who does not look before as well as after, examining 
the sources and origins of all this activity in dramatic 
composition which so distinguishes the Elizabethan 
age. 



EELIGIOUS RITES 



109 



The beginnings of classic drama were in religious 
rites ; the origin of the modern theatre, also, segin- 
was in the attempt to impress religious^ truth ^i^ss. 
upon the people. Between the ancient and the modern 
stage, however, there is no link of immediate connec- 
tion. From the period of utter decadence, when pagan 
art was lost amid the brutalities of gladiatorial shows 
and worse, to the first simple tableaux and pantomimes 
intended to figure forth the events and facts of sacred 
history, a wide gap intervenes. And yet the new be- 
ginnings were similar in kind to those of the earliest 
dramatic art. 

Perhaps the Easter festivals or the Christmas cele- 
brations of the Church suggested first the pious adap- 
tation of this ancient art of acting to present im- 
pressively the facts of the new religion ; per- Religious 
haps in the solemn ritual of the Mass itself 
there was more than a mere suggestion of theatrical 
effectiveness in its inevitable appeal to the imagina- 
tion of humble worshipers. To enforce the lesson of 
Good Friday, the Crucifix was interred with a simple 
ceremonial, and on Easter Sunday it was disinterred. 
Gradually this brief pantomime grew into an elaborate^ 
ceremonial. In some recess of the cathedral chapel 
a tomb was built, with space for watchmen who should 
represent the Roman guards ; and here on Easter 
morning the assembled congregation, awe-struck but 
curious, saw the women visit the sepulchre, saw the 
angels roll away the stone that sealed its entrance, 
saw Peter and J ohn come running ; by and by the 
return of Mary Magdalene was the signal for one to 
appear arrayed in the likeness of a gardener, who pro- 
nounced the woman's name and vanished. Then the 
great church was filled with the sound of praise as the 
service closed with the Easter anthem. St. Francis of 



110 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



Assisi (1182-1226) arranged a little scene at Christ- 
mas time near his hermitage in the forest. An ox and 
an ass were baited there, and by the manger he placed 
a mother and her babe, while a throng of peasant folk 
watched the tableau silently. This homely scene was 
repeated elsewhere, and later the adoration of the 
Magi was included ; then the flight into Egypt. In 
the larger churches Joseph was presented leading the 
ass, on which sat Mother and Child, from the neigh- 
borhood of the high altar down through the nave to- 
ward the main entrance, where for a time they rested ; 
meanwhile the slaughter of the Innocents was enacted 
at the chancel, and after a space the little procession 
retraced its path, and the play was over. 

Very early in the Christian centuries were the be- 
The ginnings of these things in France. They 

Miracle appeared in England soon after the Con- 
quest, and in their amplified form these 
sacred dramas were known as Miracle Plays^ or Mys- 
teries. When the scope of these plays and their elabo- 
ration outo^rew the limitations of church and ecclesi- 
astic, their presentation was intrusted to the guilds, or 
great trades companies ; and cycles, or groups of plays, 
were arranged for the stage. Within the series would 
be included important events of scripture narrative, 
sometimes extending from the fall of Lucifer to the 
final judgment. The various guilds were assigned 
particular scenes, which they presented on large mov- 
able platforms called pageants^ drawn by horses from 
station to station through the town — a fresh pageant 
with a new play taking the place of each as it lum- 
bered on to its next appointment. Thus all the scenes 
of an entire cycle would be enacted before all the in- 
habitants of a town, although the whole presentation 
might easily occupy several days. Such a series of 



THE MIRACLE PLAYS 



111 



miracle plays was presented regularly in Chester at 
Whitsuntide. A second important group is that of 
the Coventry mysteries ; the York plays are also 
famous, and so are the Towneley,^ or Widkirk, plays. 
There are twenty-four in the Chester cycle, preserved 
in a manuscript of the year 1600. These plays had 
been given at Chester as early as 1268, and their pre- 
sentation continued down to 1577. The Coventry 
manuscript dates from the year 1468, and the plays 
number forty-two. They were regularly performed 
from the close of the fourteenth century to the close 
of the sixteenth. There were thirty plays in the Towne- 
ley group, and forty-eight in the series given at York. 
Miracle plays were at first written in Latin ; some 
of them, doubtless, were translated into Norman- 
French, and finally they appeared in English. 

With the secularization of the miracle plays other 
than sacred elements were speedily added ; Modifi. 
the moral effect of their performance was cations, 
sometimes quite other than was desired, and in some 
localities at least they were discountenanced, if not 
actually prohibited, by the Church. The natural de- 
mand for amusement was a leading force in the devel- 
opment of the realistic portrayal of character. To 
make fun for the audience, new personages were intro- 
duced, like Noah's wife, who is quarrelsome and refuses 
to enter the Ark until she is threatened with a beating, 
and is finally bustled aboard by her sons. Serving- 
men, shepherds, soldiers, became permanent types. 
Herod was a popular favorite, as he stormed and 
raved about the scene. Termagant, the traditional 
deity of the Saracens, was another robust braggart on 
this early stage. Such creations, though crude, were, 

1 So called from the name of the family in whose possession were 
the manuscripts. 



112 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 

nevertheless, a real beginning in original cliaracteriza- 
tion, based on types with which these venturesome ap- 
prentices were themselves familiar. Indeed there are 
some notable scenes distinguished by a tragic realism 
of no inferior type. 

Coincidently with the miracle plays developed the 
The Mo- Moralities ; and these latter — allegories in 
raiities. which the virtues and the vices appeared un- 
der their own names — enjoyed a popularity equal to 
that attained by the earlier religious dramas. The 
moralities were in existence as far back as Henry VI. 's 
time (1422-71). The titles of some of the most ac- 
cessible are : Lusty Juventus^ The Castle of Perse- 
verance^ The World and the Child^ Hick Scorner^ 
Everyman^ The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom^ The 
Four Elements^ The Trial of Treasure. The conven- 
tional material in these moral plays was the course of 
Youth, or " Human Nature," on the stage of life. He 
is beguiled by characters like Hypocrisy, Lust, Ava- 
rice, Slander, Jealousy, Abominable Living, Malice, 
and Discord. On the other hand he is aided by Per- 
severance, Discretion, Pity, Mercy, Wisdom, Magnan- 
imity, Good Hope, Conscience, and the like. In some 
of the moralities a controversial war was waged between 
Komanism and Protestantism; in others the evident 
purpose is to instruct, and the scene grows tedious be- 
cause of long and prosy homilies on scientific or moral 
subjects. Again we find the comic characters the most 
popular, and as in the miracle plays, some conven- 
tional types are introduced ; such are the Innkeeper 
and the Peddler. But most characteristic of these 
personages are the Devil and the Vice, who swagger 
through the play together, supplying rough and ready 
humor to tickle the common folk. The Devil was fig- 
ured forth with a shaggy skin, a huge false nose, 



MORALITIES AND INTERLUDES 113 



horns, hoof, and taiL The Vice was costumed like an 
athlete, and carried a lath sword, with which he bela- 
bored the other characters, especially the Devil, al- 
though the close of his career was inevitably his de- 
scent, on the Devil's shoulders, into Hell. A morality 
entitled The, Necromancer^ written in 1504 by John 
Skelton, contains characters drawn from common life. 

In the presentation of these moralities professional 
actors were employed. Their exhibitions were given 
in the halls of the nobility, in intervals of banquets, 
and on holidays in the open squares of towns. At an 
early period companies of players were niaintained by 
noblemen. The Duke of Gloucester, afterward King 
Richard III., was thus a patron of the drama as early 
as 1475. Henry VII. (1485-1509) supported two 
such companies. Henry VIII. maintained three. 

The name of interlude^ sometimes applied to these 
compositions, is significant of their use in elab- The "in- 
orate entertainments, as well as at the feasts, of^^oh? ' 
which supplied amusement for court and no- Heywood. 
bility. As has been stated, the farcical element was 
generously mingled with the serious. A special devel- 
opment of this class of plays is found in the interludes 
of John Heywood, who died about the year 1565. These 
plays, three in number, are entitled : The Merry Play 
between Johan the Hushand^ Tyh his JVife, and Sir 
John the Priest; The Pour PJs ; and The Merry 
Play betweeii the Pardoner and the Friar^ the Cu- 
rate and Neighbor Pratt. These " merry plays " are 
scarcely more than dialogues abounding in retort, yet 
incidentally delineating character with considerable 
success. Of the three interludes The Four P.\s is 
the best. Four well-known types are introduced : the 
Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and the Peddler. 
Some of these characters had been portrayed by Chau- 



114 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



cer in his Tales^ and there is more than a mere sug- 
gestion of the earlier portraits in the character plays 
of Heywood. 

The interlude is opened by the Palmer, who recites 
The Four the extent of his journeyings to distant 
shrines : — 

" At Jerusalem have I been 
Before Christ's blessed sepulcher : 
The Mount of Calvary have I seen, 
A holy place, you may be sure. 
To Jehosaphat and Olivet 
On foot, God wot, I went right bare ; 
Many a salt tear did I sweat 
Before my carcase could come there." 

And so on with the list until he is interrupted by the 
Pardoner, who says : — 

" And when ye have gone as far as ye can, 
For all your labor and ghostly intent. 
Ye Will come as wise as ye went." 

Then follows a long discussion upon the merit of pil- 
grimages and pardons, the veracity of pilgrims and 
pardoners. The Poticary and the Peddler join in the 
debate, and finally, as the principal argument seems to 
settle upon the point which is the greater liar, the Par- 
doner or the Palmer, it is suggested by the Peddler that 
a genuine contest take place between the two, on the 
merits of which he himself shall judge. This is agreed 
to. Some diversion is provided by an exhibition of 
the relics in the Pardoner's wallet and the contents of 
the Poticary's chest. Among the treasures of the for- 
mer are " the blessed jawbone " of All Saints and the 
great toe of the Trinity. The Pardoner's tale is of his 
trip to Purgatory and thence to Hell to secure the re- 
lease of a woman, his one-time friend, and of his success, 
owing to the Devil's desire to be rid of all women ; — 



TRUE COMEDY 



115 



" For all we devils within this den 
Have more to do with two women 
Than with all the charg-e we have beside." 

The Palmer is surprised at the implication thus cast 
upon women. In his extended travels, he declares, he 
has seen five hundred thousand : — 

" Yet in all places where I have been, 
Of all the women that I have seen, 
I never saw or knew in my conscience 
Any one woman out of patience." 

The Poticary exclaims : " By the Mass, there is a great 
lie ! " The Pardoner : " I never heard a greater, by 
our Lady ! " and the Peddler asks : " A greater ! nay, 
know ye any so great?" 
And thus the Palmer wins. 

The date of The Four P.^s cannot be much later 
than 1530. The first regular comedy in English was 
written previous to 1550, by Nicholas Udall, True 
who in 1534 became head master of Eton Col- Comeay. 
lege, and afterward of Westminster School. Udall 
was a classical scholar, familiar with the works of Ter- 
ence and Plautus, and under their influence composed 
his play Ralph Roister Doister^ in five acts. The 
plot is simple and is confined to complications arising 
from the wooing of Dame Custance, who is betrothed 
to Gawin Goodluck, by Ralph Roister Doister, a boast- 
ful, cowardly fellow ; he in turn is the butt and victim 
of one Matthew Merrygreek, the chief conspirator in 
the plot. 

It is interesting to note the influence of the classic 
drama in the development of English comedy. The 
revival of learning had awakened a new interest in 
Latin as well as Greek literature. As early as 1520 
Plautus had been performed before King Henry VIII. ; 
the comedies of both Plautus and Terence were pre- 



116 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



seilted at the court of Elizabeth; Seneca had been 
translated entire. 

In 1562 there was performed at AYhitehall, before the 
queen, the first serious attempt at genuine 
Tragedy. tragedy in English. This play, entitled Gov- 
hoduc^ was the work of two students of the Inner Tem- 
ple, Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, afterward 
Earl of Dorset, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, 
and Lord High Treasurer of England. The tragedy is 
modeled after Seneca. The argument thus sets forth 
the plot : — 

" Gorboduc, King of Britain, divided his realm in his 
lifetime to his sons, Ferrex and Porrex. The sons fell to 
divisions and dissensions. The younger killed the elder. 
The mother that more dearly loved the elder, for revenge 
killed the younger. The people, moved with the cruelty of 
the fact, rose in rebellion and slew both father and mother. 
The nobility assembled and most terribly destroyed the 
rebels. And afterwards, for want of issue of the Prince, 
whereby the succession of the crown became uncertain, they 
fell to civil war, in which both they and many of their issues 
were slain and the land for a long time almost desolate and 
miserably wasted." 

Here certainly is tragic motive in abundance, al- 
though it should be noted that, following the classic 
model, these tragic events are described, not actually 
enacted upon the scene. Crude and extravagant as it 
is, this play marks an epoch in the development of the 
English drama. It was a fortunate choice which led 
the authors of Gorboduc to employ blank verse instead 
of rhyme, — a form of verse which has been recognized 
ever since as peculiarly appropriate to the demands of 
tragedy. 

These are but a few of the more prominent land- 
marks in the early history of the English stage, and 



HISTORICAL PLAYS 



117 



only suggest the manner of its growth. It is to be 
understood that there were numerous examples of the 
phases that have been noted, for the development dur- 
ing Elizabeth's reign was rapid. Miracle plays and 
moralities flourished side by side and continued popu- 
lar for some years after Shakespeare's birth ; it would 
be strange indeed if in his early life the great play- 
wright himself had not been present at such perform- 
ances, mingling with the throngs of interested onlook- 
ers who trooped to the festivities at Warwick Cas- 
tle, or at Kenilworth, or on holidays even as far as 
Coventry, to see the mysteries which were there per- 
formed. 

Moreover, there was an increasing store of dramatic 
works, the material of which was drawn from Historical 
life with more or less realistic detail, which ^^^y^- 
embodied, too, in an ever increasing degree the spirit 
of genuine comedy and tragedy. A most prolific source 
of such material, rich in dramatic quality, lay at hand 
in the recently compiled chronicles and histories of 
England's national existence ; and the brilliant achieve- 
ments of contemporary history which had fired the en- 
thusiasm of Elizabeth's subjects kindled an intense 
interest in these records of events which had been 
impressive and momentous in their time. Of the his- 
torians who contributed to this material the most im- 
portant was Raphael Holinshed, whose Chronicles of 
England^ Scotland^ and Ireland^ published in 1577, 
formed the great storehouse from which were drawn the 
arguments of a number of popular dramas before Shake- 
speare had recourse to it for the material used in his 
own remarkable "histories." Preceding Holinshed in 
point of time was Edward Hall, whose work. The Un- 
ion o f the Tioo Nohle Families of Lancaster and York 
(1547), supplied its share of the material dealing with 



118 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



the Wars of the Eoses. We find an interestinor illus- 
tration of this resort to history in the pageant of King 
John^ written by Bishop John Bale, probably in the 
reign of Edward VI. This old play is really a mo- 
rality ; for along with the historical characters there 
are introduced allegorical personages such as England, 
Nobility, Civil Order, Treason, and Sedition. A later 
play. The Troublesome Reign of John, King of Eng- 
land^ printed in 1591, but written some years previous 
to that date, has no connection with Bale's work. Other 
examples of these early historical plays are found in 
The True Tragedy of Richard^ Duke of Yorh^ and the 
First Part of the Contention betwixt the Two Famous 
Houses of York and Lancaster^ which formed the basis 
of Shakespeare's King Henry VI. The Famous Vic- 
tories of Henry V. was acted previous to 1588, and a 
Latin play on the career of Richard III. was presented 
at Cambridge in 1579. A later play on the same sub- 
ject antedated by several years Shakespeare's tragedy 
of that title. That Shakespeare himself was intensely 
stirred by the heroic richness of this historical material 
is evident in the use he makes of it in his own great 
" histories." Thus in his King John^ before the walls 
of besieged Anglers, Cceur de Lion's son is made to 
say : — 

" Ha, Majesty ! how hig-h thy glory towers, 
When the rich blood of kings is set on fire ! 
O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel ; 
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, 
In undetermin'd differences of kings." ^ 

With the passing of miracle plays and moralities, 
innyards, with their surrounding galleries, became the 
usual places of dramatic performances. The earliest 

1 Act II. scene i. 350. Compare with this passage the prologue to 
King Henry F., referred to on page 121. 



INTERIOR EQUIPMENT 



119 



public playhouse in London, called The Theatre, was 
built in 1576 by James Burbadge, father of TheThe- 
Richard Burbadge, the great actor of tragic 
parts in Shakespeare's day. Next in date of building 
was The Curtain.^ The Rose was opened in 1592 on 
the Bankside. At Newington Butts there was a play- 
house known by the name of that locality. The Globe, 
most famous of all the London playhouses, was erected 
in 1599 on the site of the old Theatre, which was torn 
down after its owner had built the new Blackfriars 
Theatre in 1596. The Red Bull, The Fortune, The 
Cockpit, and The Swan were also standing in Shake- 
speare's time. In all, the city boasted some dozen 
theatres of varying use and fame. 

If one would reconstruct an early London playhouse, 
he should think first of one of those round, or many- 
sided structures, familiar now in all large cities as used 
for the exhibition of cycloramas and realistic battle pic- 
tures. In buildings similarly shaped, but not jj^^g^j^y 
entirely roofed over, the greatest English Equip- 
dramas were first performed. A shed-roof 
projected a little way inside the circle, thus protect- 
ing the stage and the tiers of seats that corresponded 
to our balconies and boxes ; the large centre of the 
theatre was unprotected commonly from either sun or 
shower, and here the " groundlings " stood elbowing 
one another throughout the progress of the play. This 
part of the theatre was strewn with rushes ; in time it 
received the not inappropriate name of the pit. The 
stage itself was plainly furnished ; there was little 
thought of decoration or of setting. There was always 
an elevated platform or balcony overlooking the stage 
at the rear ; and upon this elevation were presented 
the frequent plays within plays, as in Hamlet. This 

^ Derived from the Latin curtina, a little court ; hence a local name. 



120 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



platform also furnished the balcony scene in Romeo 
and Juliet^ and served to suggest the walls of a city, as 
in King John and in the " histories." Gayly dressed 
and boisterous representatives of the court usually occu- 
pied stools upon the stage itself, where they displayed 
their finery, their fashions, and their manners, often to 
the great annoyance of audience and actors. Coarse- 
visaged, hoarse-voiced women sold oranges and apples 
to the mechanics and apprentices who crowded the pit. 
Tradesmen and gentlemen commoners filled the little 
pens which served for private boxes. Very few women 
were seen in this public audience ; those of any repu- 
tation were closely masked. The gallants on the stage 
played cards and smoked, talked with one another, and 
insolently commented on actors and auditors alike. 
The performances were usually at three in the after- 
noon. A flag flying from the roof indicated that a 
play was on the stage. With a flourish of trumpets 
the customary Prologue was introduced, and then the 
action proceeded. Scarcely any scenery was employed. 
A card was hung announcing the scene in a w^ood, a 
castle, a field of battle, France, Bohemia, Paris, Venice, 
or London. Articles of common furnishing were uti- 
lized, and sometimes more elaborate efforts were made 
to give a realistic effect to the scene ; but for the most 
part a frank appeal was made to the imagination of 
the spectators, and the liveliness of the imagination 
in the Elizabethan age seems to have been entirely 
adequate to all demands.^ There are many who assert 

1 " Can this cockpit hold 

The vasty fields of France ? or may we cram 
Within this wooden the very casques 
That did afPright the air at Agincourt ? 



Suppose within the girdle of these walls 
Are now confin'd two mighty monarchies, 



THE COMPANIES 



121 



that this condition was favorable in every way, and that 
the performance grew vastly more impressive through 
the very absence of mechanical details, which possibly 
distract attention rather than emphasize the actor's art. 

No attempt was made to reproduce the costumes 
historically suggestive of the character or scene ; yet 
the actor's wardrobe was as luxurious and costly as 
that of the courtier himself. The women's parts were 
played by boys or men, who were often famous for 
their skill. If one would have the comment of the best 
possible authority on the methods of the Elizabethan 
stage, let him turn to the third act of Hamlet and fol- 
low carefully the instructions to the players. In many 
a comic scene, besides, has Shakespeare burlesqued the 
rude craft of some early player, as well as the gen- 
eral poverty of the stage in his time. 

Professional actors were banded into companies dis- 
tinguished by the title of some patron. There ^j^g qo^. 
were the Lord Leicester's Players, the Queen's panies. 
Players, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, etc. The ser- 
vice of the patron does not seem usually to have in- 
cluded much more than the securing of the royal 
license for the company, although the Queen's and the 
King's companies enjoyed some further privileges, and 
were honored with some special obligations in present- 
ing their plays at court. A single company might be 
known by different names at various times. The Earl 

Whose high upreared and abutting- fronts 

The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder : 

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts ; 

Into a thousand parts divide one man, 

And make imaginary puissance ; 

Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them 

Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth ; 

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings," etc. 

Prologue to King Henry F. 



122 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



of Leicester's Men became Lord Strange's in 1588. 
In 1592 Lord Strange became Earl of Derby, and the 
players changed their title accordingly. In 1594 the 
Earl of Derby died, and his company of actors became 
Lord Hunsdon's or the Lord Chamberlain's Men. In 
1596 the earl died, and his son, the second Lord Huns- 
don, became their patron ; he also became Chamberlain 
in 1597. After the accession of James in 1603, this 
same company was honored with the title of King's 
Players. William Shakespeare was certainly a mem- 
ber of this company in 1594, and one of its foremost 
men in 1603. It is probable that he joined it on his 
first arrival in London. Richard Burbadge, greatest 
actor of his time, was Shakespeare's colleague and first 
interpreted his great tragic characters. William Kemp, 
the best comedian of his day, was a member of this same 
company. John Heming and Henry Condell were fel- 
low actors with the poet, who collected Shakespeare's 
plays and edited the famous first folio text in 1623. 
This notable company first occupied The Theatre in 
Moorfields, and then the Rose, on Bankside ; but it 
is the Globe Theatre with which they were especially 
identified, and of which Shakespeare himself was part 
owner. 

Something of the development of the English drama 
Shake- has been outlined in the foregoing para- 
Prede-'^ graphs ; something remains to be said con- 
cessors. cerning the group of men who actually pos- 
sessed the London stage at the moment of Shakespeare's 
entrance on professional life. Their influence on his 
career was not insignificant. 

First in point of time came John Lyly. His dis- 
tinction rests upon his romances and his pastoral come- 
dies, which made him the most popular writer of his 
day. Lyly's earliest work appeared in 1579, when he 




THE INTERIOR OF THE SWAN THEATRE AS SKETCHED BY JOHANNES 
DE WITT, A DUTCH SCHOLAR, ABOUT 1596 

(At the rear of the stage, which is uncovered, is the tiring-room, to which the two 
large doors give entrance. Above the tiring-room extends a covered balcony, now 
occupied by spectators, but used by the actors, when required, in the presentation 
of a play. At the door of the chamber near the gallery roof stands a trumpeter to 
announce the beginning of an act. The flag, with the emblem of the swan, is flying, 
as a sign to those outside" that a play is in progress. The disposition of boxes and 
galleries is plain, but unfortunately the "groundlings " are unrepresented in the 
picture. The form of the building is oval. No other drawing of the interior of an 
Elizabethan theatre is known to exist, says Dowden. The original sketch was 
discovered recently in the University Library, Utrecht.) 



124 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



was a graduate student at Oxford. It was a novel, as 
John Lyiy, novels then went, entitled EupJiues. The 
1554-1606. story is very slight; it details the observa- 
tions and reflections of a young Athenian who, in 
the second part of the narrative, visits England and 
expresses his opinions on society, friendship, love, 
philosophy, and religion. The peculiar feature of this 
work is its strange and ingenious literary style, a style 
so distinctive that the word euphuistic was coined to 
designate it. In Lyly's euphuism^ alliteration played 
a conspicuous part ; elaborately balanced antithesis was 
curiously studied out ; the vocabulary was burdened 
with unusual and bombastic terms ; the imagery was 
forced to an absurd extravagance and made much use 
of the fabulous material which may at one time have 
passed for natural science. The whole principle of 
this style was artificial : — 

" There is no privilege that needeth a joardon, neither is 
there any remission to be asked where a commission is to 
be granted. I speak this, gentlemen, not to excuse the of- 
fence which was takeri but to offer a (defence where I was 
mistaken.'^ 

"As by basil the scorpion is engendered, and by the 
means of the same herb destroyed ... or as the salaman- 
der which being a long space nourished in the fire at last 
quencheth it." 

These may be taken as fair illustrations of the eccen- 
tricities of euphuism ; and yet Lyly's style became 
the fashion, not only in the literature of the day, but to 
some extent even in the sober speech of polite society. 
In spite of its oddities. Euphuism was not without 
wholesome effect upon the subsequent structure of our 
English prose, encouraging an attention and a care 
for style which had been in some degree neglected. 



JOHN LYLY 



125 



Following the success of Euphues^ Lyly attached him- 
self to the court and sought an appointment as Master 
of the Kevels, but this hope was never gratified. The 
author of Euphues^ however, wrote seven or eight court 
comedies, so-called, which were rather masques ^ than 
comedies, as we use the latter term. Their themes were 
usually the elaborate flattery of the queen ; their mate- 
rial and their titles were taken from the classics. Six 
of Lyly's plays were first presented before Elizabeth 
herself by the children's companies then frequently 
employed. The more important of the comedies are : 
Endimion^ Midas, Sapho and Phao, Alexander and 
Campaspe, Galatea. Into the current of his rather 
sluggish dramas Lyly tossed an occasional bit of lyric 
verse, which, more than anything else from his pen, 
appeals to the appreciation of the modern reader.^ 

The influence of John Lyly upon the early work of 
Shakespeare is considerable. Love's Lahour 's Lost, 
A Midsummer Nighfs Dream, The Merry Wives of 
Windsor, and As You Like It contain many sugges- 
tions of this " Euphuist." While at times he satirizes 
the absurdities of euphuism, Shakespeare, like his con- 
temporaries, drops easily into the same artificial style. 
A good example of his serious use of that peculiar 
diction is found in the Duke's speech in As You Like 
It, Act II., scene i. 

Participating in the dramatic activity of this prepar- 
atory period were George Peele (1558-97), pg^^g 
author of The Arraiqnment of Paris, The Kyd, 

rm Greene 

Chronicle of Edward L, The Love of King Nash, and 
David and Fair Bethseba, and The Battle ^'^^s®- 
of Alcazar ; Robert Greene (1560-92), whose plays, 
Alphonsus King of Ar rag on, Orlando Furioso, James 
IV., Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and George- 

^ Page 147. ^ See the song Cupid and My Campaspe Played. 



126 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



a -Greene^ struck a note echoed in many a play of 
the greater dramatist ; and Thomas Kyd (died 1594), 
author of The, Spanish Tragedy. Of Kyd's per- 
sonality we know nothing. Peele and Greene were 
typical bohemians of their craft and day, and the 
brevity of their career is significant of dissipation and 
reckless squandering of all their powers. Intimately 
associated with these writers were two others, Thomas 
Nash (1567-1600) and Thomas Lodge (died 1625). 
Nash and Lodge contributed little directly to the 
stage ; their work is rather in the field of prose ro- 
mance, in which they were pioneers with Lyly and 
also Greene. Lodge was the author of Rosalynde., 
the prototype of Shakespeare's heroine ; Greene, writer 
of a dozen romances, supplied in Pandosto the mate- 
rial for The Winter's Tale, Nash was a realist, and 
wrote a novel called The Unfortunate Traveller^ or 
the Life of Jack Wilton (1594). In his slight contri- 
butions to dramatic literature he employed the method 
of the satirist. 

But by far the most interesting and most important 
of Shakespeare's predecessors was Marlowe, who was 
born at Canterbury, the son of a shoemaker. He 
received a university training at Cambridge, where he 

took his bachelor's degree in 1583. Of his 
pher ' early life we know less even than of Shake- 
Mariowe, speare's, but his first play, Tamburlaine., was 

acted in 1587 or 1588. Then followed The 
Tragical History of Doctor Paustus, The Jew of 
Malta, and Edward IL, three great plays which car- 
ried Marlowe to the forefront among this group of 
dramatists, profoundly impressing young Shakespeare's 
swiftly developing genius, and giving promise of 
achievements comparable to those of the great poet 
himself. The mere fact that in the Jew of Malta 



CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE 



127 



Shakespeare found a model for Lis creation of Shylock 
is less significant than the close resemblance in plan 
and structure between Marlowe's Edward and Shake- 
speare's Richard II. Indeed the former play may be 
regarded as having given the dramatic "history" its 
permanent form. In 1593, five years, perhaps, after 
the completion of his earliest play, Marlowe, twenty- 
nine years old, died a tragic and disgraceful death. 
Such was the end of not a few of the brilliant charac- 
ters who wasted genius and life thus in the prodigal 
age of the great queen. 

The spirit of Marlowe's dramatic work is a passion- 
ate thirst for power. His dramatis personoe — Mar- 
lowe himself — craved that 

" Solely sovereign sway and masterdom " 

which Shakespeare included as an object in the o'er- 
reaching ambition of Macbeth. He is never to be 
ranked among the minor poets of his time. Marlowe's 
services to English dramatic art were of prime impor- 
tance. He used blank verse superbly. It was no 
mere hyperbole of compliment that Ben Jonson uttered 
when he spoke of 

" Marlowe's mighty line." 

Bombast — ever a delight to the Elizabethan ear — is 
frequent enough in the speeches of Marlowe's charac- 
ters ; but even here there is an irresistible roll in the 
verse that speaks of an imagination and a strength 
destined for great things. In the drama of the Scythian 
shepherd-warrior Tamburlaine occurs this character- 
istic scene, which may illustrate the effectiveness of that 
" mighty line : " — 

" Tamburlaine. Bring out my footstool. 

\_Bajazeth is taken from the cage.] 



128 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



" Bajazeth. Ye holy priests of heavenly Mahomet, 

That, sacrificing-, slice and cut your flesh, 
Staining his altars with your purple blood ; 
Make Heaven to frown and every fixed star 
To suck up poison from the moorish fens, 
And pour it in this glorious tyrant's throat ! " ^ 

Elsewhere Tamburlaine himself discourses thus : — 

" The world will strive with hosts of men-at-arms, 
To swarm unto the ensign I support : 
The host of Xerxes, which by fame is said 
To have drank the mighty Parthian Araris, 
Was but a handful to that we will have. 
Our quivering lances, shaking in the air. 
And bullets, like Jove's dreadful thunderbolts. 
Enrolled in flames and fiery smouldering mists, 
Shall threat the gods more than Cyclopian wars : 
And with our sun-bright armour as we march. 
We '11 chase the stars from Heaven and dim their eyes 
That stand and muse at our admired arms." ^ 

For general study of the drama, the book of widest utility 
Sugges- chief authority is A. A. Ward's History 

tionsfor of English Dramatic Literature (Macmillan, 3 
Study. vols.). Also important is Shakespeare's Prede- 
cessors in the English Drama, by John Addington Sy- 
monds (Smith, Elder & Co.). The English Religious 
Drama, by Katharine Lee Bates (Macmillan), is condensed 
and can be used to advantage. The English Miracle 
Plays, by Alfred Pollard (Clarendon Press), contains good 
illustrations of the early drama. Specimens of the Pre- 
Shakespearian Drama, edited by J. M. Manly (Ginn), in- 
cludes, in vol. i., specimens of the miracle plays and mo- 
ralities, also The Four P.'s, by Heywood, and Bale's Kynge 
Johan. Vol. ii. contains Ralph Roister Doister, Gam- 
mer Gurton's Needle, Cambises, Gorhoduc, and plays by 
Lyly, Greene, Peele, and Kyd. This work is especially val- 
uable, and with it should be mentioned The Best Eliza- 
bethan Plays, edited by W. R. Thayer (Ginn), which gives 
the text of Marlowe's Jew of Malta, Jonson's The Alchemist, 



^ Act IV. scene ii. 1. 



2 Act II. scene ii. 13. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 129 



Beaumont and Fletcher's Philastre, The Two Nolle Kins- 
men (in part attributed to Shakespeare), and Webster's The 
Duchess of Malfi. The careful reading of these texts is 
strongly urged upon teachers. An acquaintance with the 
plays is worth more than any amount of reference to books 
which describe or criticise them ; and these collections are so 
easily available that there is no excuse for their being over- 
looked. The most important plays of the Elizabethan dra- 
matists are published in the Mermaid Series (Scribner). 
The volume devoted to Marlowe contains all his plays, and 
has an excellent introduction by J. A. Symonds. Other 
volumes include the works of Massinger, Middleton, Beau- 
mont, and Fletcher. The complete works of Marlowe have 
been edited by F. Cunningham (Chatto & Windus), also 
by A. H. BuUen (3 vols.), in The English Dramatists^ 
Series. In the series of English Readings, published by 
Henry Holt & Co., are found Lyly's Endymion, edited, 
with a critical essay upon that writer, by G. P. Baker, and 
Marlowe's Edward IL, edited by E. T. McLaughlin. 

Upon dramatic form and structure there is no more com- 
prehensive study than Freytag's Technique of the Drama^ 
translated by E. J. MacEwan (Scott, Foresman & Co.). 
The Drama, its Law and Technique, by Elizabeth Wood- 
bridge (Allyn & Bacon), is a useful book ; it is much briefer 
than Freytag's and embodies its principles. 

For an account of the times, read Shakespeare's England, 
by Edwin Goadby (Cassell), The Age of Elizabeth, by M. 
Creighton {Historical Epochs Series, Scribner), chapter 
vii. in Green's Short History of the English People, and 
Shakespeare the Boy, by W. J. Rolfe (American Book Co.). 

V. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) AND HIS 
SUCCESSORS. 

While the last stages in this evolution of the Eng- 
lish drama were passing partly within the brilliant cir- 
cle of Elizabeth's court, partly amid the extravagant 
and often dissolute scenes of bohemian literary life in 



130 FKOM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



London, there was developing at Stratford on Avon, a 
quiet village of Warwickshire, — 

" That shire which we the heart of England well may call " i 

— a youthful genius who should one day claim domin- 
ion over the English stage, to be recognized in time as 
the greatest among all the men of genius that this is- 
land kingdom was to bear. Of his life we know all 
too little ; and yet we are as well acquainted with it 
as we are with Spenser's or with Chaucer's. 

William Shakespeare was the son of J ohn and Mary 
instrat- (Arden) Shakespeare. Neither belonged to 
the educated class ; but that during the poet's 
boyhood they enjoyed the respect of the community and 
were fairly prosperous is evident. John Shakespeare, 
according to custom, practiced two or three related 
trades : he is referred to as a glover, as a butcher, and 
as a dealer in wool and leather. In 1558 he was elected 
a member of the Stratford council ; in 1559 he was ap- 
pointed constable. In fact he held numerous offices 
and was regarded clearly as one qualified to have a 
considerable share in the oversight of town affairs. In 
1568 he became bailiff, an official of great importance 
in the corporation ; he was afterward made chief alder- 
man. Later in life he fell into financial embarrassment 
and seems to have lost his standing as a man prominent 
in public service. On the 26th of April, 1564, his son, 
William, was baptized, and tradition has settled upon 
the 23d of April as the probable date of the poet's birth. 
There was a school of good academic grade at Strat- 
ford, the free grammar school, one of several that had 
been reestablished on old foundations by Edward YI. 
Here Shakespeare received such educational training 
as the schoolroom could provide. Latin grammar and 

1 Michael Drayton. 



IN STRATFORD 



131 



literature must have formed the principal subject of his 
study, and it is entirely possible that the school offered 
instruction in both French and Italian, That Shake- 
speare enjoyed some acquaintance with these languages 
is certain. Ben Jonson's often quoted assertion that 
his fellow dramatist had " small Latin and less Greek " 
should be understood as the statement of a critic who 
was himself noted for classical scholarship, and cer- 
tainly cannot be interpreted as affirming the poet's 
ignorance of either language. Conjecture has ascribed 
various employments to the son of John Shakespeare, 
and tradition has been busy with hints of youthful ex- 
ploits and wilder escapades. 

His home was in one of the richest and most beauti- 
ful shires of England, — a region of fallow field and 
romantic woodland, of winding stream and quiet coun- 
try landscape. Footpaths crossed the meadows and 
ran between hedges fragrant with spring blossoms, 
melodious with the songs of linnet and thrush. Beyond 
the smoothly flowing Avon stretched the ancient forest 
of Arden to suggest the scenes that delight us in Love's 
Labour 's Xos^, A Midmmmer Night 's Dream^ and As 
You Like It. There were little hamlets scattered over 
the countryside ; here and there were the extensive 
parks and imposing manor houses of the gentry. To 
the north, only the distance of a wholesome country walk, 
stood Warwick Castle. Kenilworth was but fifteen 
j miles away, where the Earl of Leicester elaborately 
entertained the queen with masques and pageants on 
the occasion of a royal visit in 1575, when Shakespeare 
was eleven years old. Only a few miles beyond Kenil- 
worth lay historic Coventry, at that time the third city 
in England, where miracle plays were performed as late 
as 1580, when Shakespeare was a boy of sixteen. Amid 
the memories and inspirations of these diverse scenes, 



132 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



William Shakespeare grew into the possession of his 
poetic power. 

In the fall of 1582 this youth was married to Anne 
Hathaway, daughter of a well-to-do farmer living in the 
neighboring hamlet of Shottery. The bride was eight 
years the senior of her husband. In the following year 
their daughter Susanna was born. Two other children, 
twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born early in 1585 ; 
and later in that year, or in the year following, Shake- 
speare left Stratford, to appear soon after in London, 
where for twenty years he seems to have made his home. 

When Shakespeare came to London, that was indeed 
The Spirit the marking of an epoch in English letters, 
of the Age. auspicious time for the advent 

of this gifted youth. The exhilaration of a great en- 
thusiasm was in the air. It was a period of extra- 
ordinary enterprise and the most daring achievements. 
A remarkable growth in national spirit was the dis- 
tinguishing feature of Elizabeth's reign, and various 
natural causes contributed to this grov^^th. The re- 
ligious troubles, which arose in the time of Henry 
VIII. and reached their terrible climax in the reign 
of Mary, were now allayed, and a spirit of tolerance 
insured an era of religious liberty gratefully welcomed 
by the nation at large. A notable activity in all 
kinds of trade, and general prosperity, the result of a 
rapidly developing commerce, gave a new confidence 
to the kingdom caught in such desperate straits by 
the unfortunate policy of Mary. The spirit of expan- 
sion possessed the age, and admiration succeeded won- 
der at the deeds of Elizabeth's knights and admirals. 
In Shakespeare's boyhood Sir Francis Drake accom- 
plished the circumnavigation of the globe.^ While 

1 Read in Green's Short History of the English People the para- 
graph on " The Sea Dogs," ch. vii. § 6. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE 



133 



he was still in his teens, the colonization of the new 
world began in the settlement of Virginia. He was 
already making his way in London when there oc- 
curred that momentous event which we call the defeat 
of the Great Armada, an event which not only filled 
all England with the joy of an unprecedented victory, 
but which banished for the time the chance of foreign 
interference in Church or State. As a result of these 
favoring conditions, the whole kingdom awoke to a 
sudden sense of its own greatness and power. More- 
over, the hearts of the people were united in a warmth 
of passionate devotion to their queen, a devotion which 
seems to have thrown the idealism of a romantic chiv- 
alry over all the relations of subject and sovereign. 
Elizabeth's courtiers were extravagant in the expression 
of their worship. The Earl of Hatton declared that 
" to see her was Heaven ; the lack of her was Hell." 
Sir Philip Sidney, the Earl of Essex, Kaleigh, Wal- 
singham. Lord Burleigh, the Earl of Leicester — all 
were leaders in the brilliant group of cavaliers who 
waited on the queen. Some of these men aspired to 
the most intimate relations with their sovereign ; some 
were themselves distinguished by their contributions to 
the literature of the age, and were noted for their gen- 
erous patronage of writers more gifted than themselves. 
Drake, Erobisher, Hawkins, Grenville, were among the 
most famous of the gallant sailors who helped to make 
their country feared on every sea. These men felt the 
spirit of the time, and each in his own way obeyed an 
impulse that was irresistible. There was a feverish ex- 
altation, an exuberant extravagance in private as well 
as public enterprise. Young men scarce out of boy- , 
hood embarked on hazardous ventures. Vast fortunes 
were squandered as recklessly as they had been gath- 
ered. Men as well as women wore rich and striking 



134 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



costumes. Novel luxuries found their way into use. In 
the construction of new mansions chimneys were added, 
a comfort hitherto unknown. Forks were introduced, 
and table etiquette improved along with a more luxuri- 
ous service. Great sums were expended in pageants 
and entertainments, to which the common citizens were 
often admitted. Men thought and spoke as they dressed 
and planned — lavishly. The highly elaborate and 
artificial diction affected by Lyly and Sidney was imi- 
tated and exaggerated by the court ; it too was signifi- 
cant of the time. In this epoch the imagination ruled. 
Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare were as 
truly types of the age in literature as were the men of 
daring and brilliant action already named. In the 
light of such conditions we may appreciate the language 
of the French historian Taine, when, in introducing his 
chapter on Shakespeare, he declares that this great age 
alone could have cradled such a child. 

This was the character of the time when Shake- 
speare came to London. The Shepherd'' s Calendar 
had been written at Penshurst, where Sidney had 
framed the passionate sonnets comprised in Astrophel 
and Stella^ and Spenser was now in Ireland busy in 
his leisure over the first three books of The Faerie 
Qiieene. Francis Bacon, recently admitted to the bar, 
was pursuing his unhappy career in search of prefer- 
ment at court, and accepting favors from the young 
Earl of Essex, then prime favorite with the queen. 
Ben Jonson was attending Westminster School, a lad 
of twelve. The comedies of Lyly were in fashion with 
the court. Peele and Greene were in their prime, and 
Marlowe was at work on Tamhurlaine^ his first success. 

There is no exact record of Shakespeare's first ex- 
periences at the capital. In some manner he found 
employment at one of the two playhouses then open, 



136 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



probably in some subordinate position sucli as care- 
I London servant for the benefit of patrons. 

Then he became a member of the company, 
and in the adaptation of old plays he doubtless began 
his apprenticeship as a writer for the stage. In time, 
as his ability was recognized, he was set at more ambi- 
tious tasks, and, first in collaboration with established 
playwrights, then in the full freedom of his own exu- 
berant fancy, he began to produce his works. Of 
Shakespeare's success as an actor few notes have been 
preserved. He is described by one contemporary as 
" excellent in the quality he professes." ^ Another 
says that he was "a handsome, well-shaped man," and 
an old actor, William Beeston, asserted that he " did 
act exceeding welL" We know that Shakespeare ap- 
peared in two of Ben Jonson's plays. Every Man in 
his Humor and Sejamis ; also that he played the part 
of Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost in Ham- 
let ; by one writer ^ this last role was referred to as " the 
top of his performance." That he played principal 
parts in all his own dramas is affirmed in the first col- 
lected edition (1623) of his works. 

Shakespeare's hand is felt in Titus Andronieus 
and in the First Part of King Henry VI. Concern- 
ing the former there is a tradition that some dramatist. 
His First ^^^^ unidentified, brought the play to Shake- 
Period, speare's company, and that it was turned over 
to the poet for revision. The "history" may have 
been written by Marlowe and Shakespeare in con- 
junction. About 1590 the young dramatist began 
original work. The result of the next five years in- 
cluded Love's Labour's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two 
Gentlemen of Verona, A Midsummer Night 's Dream, 

1 Henry Chettle, publisher of Greene's Pamphlet, 1592. 

2 Nicholas Rowe. 



HIS FIRST PERIOD 



137 



Homeo and Juliet^ the Second and Third Parts of 
King Henry VI., Richard III., Richard II, and 
King John. Because of their preponderance, this is 
often called the period of the early comedies and his- 
tories. As it represents the experimental stage of 
Shakespeare's activity, Mr. Dowden describes it by the 
phrase " In the Workshop." That the poet's power 
was recognized is evident from an interesting note of 
the time which also indicates that his success was suffi- 
ciently marked to rouse the jealousy of some older 
men. In 1592 appeared a little book entitled A 
Groatsicorth of Wit, the last utterance of the popular 
and profligate playwright, Robert Greene, who died in 
beggary just before the publication of his pamphlet. 
In a spirit of bitterness Greene remonstrates against 
the habits of new writers, accusing them of making 
too free with the material of his own plays and the 
productions of his friends, Marlowe and Peele. One 
sentence of his indictment addressed to the writers 
named gains importance because of its reference to 
Shakespeare : — 

" Yes, trust them not," he says, " for there is an upstart 
Crow beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers 
heart wrapped in a players hide, supposes he is as well able 
to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you : and being 
an absolute Johannes Factotum is, in his owne conceit, the 
only Shake-scene in the countrie." 

In the Third Part of King Henry VI occurs the 
line, 

" Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide," 

and the allusion in Greene's attack suggests that pos- 
sibly he, at least in part, was author of the original 
plays which Shakespeare recast finally in the Second 
and Third Parts of King Henry VI But the charge 
made by Greene is of importance mainly as being the 



138 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



earliest known allusion to the poet in print, and as 
throwing light upon the nature of his labors and their 
success. In a publication only three months later, 
Chettle apologizes for this reference, and warmly ap- 
proves the dramatist and his art. The dedication of 
the two poems, Venus and Adonis and The Hape of 
Lucrece (1593, 1594), is ample proof of Shake- 
speare's recognition by those who patronized the arts. 

Between 1595 and 1601 Shakespeare wrote The Mer- 
chant of Venice, the two parts of King Henry IV., 
King Henry V, Merry Wives of Windsor, Taming of 
Second Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, As 

Period. You Like It, Twelfth Night, This is the 
period of the later comedies — what Dowden denomi- 
nates " In the World." Here we fall immediately under 
the spell of Shakespeare's perfect art. Never have 
sentiment and romance, pathos and humor, mingled so 
exquisitely as in these beautiful creations of rich poetic 
fancy and dramatic power. Five at least of the plays 
are masterpieces. Elizabeth is said to have been so 
taken with the character of Falstaff in King Henry 
IV. that she bade the author show that personage in 
love ; and tradition ascribes the creation of the Merry 
Wives to this command. Evidences of the poet's 
prosperity are not wanting. In 1597 John Shake- 
speare was allowed the grant of a coat of arms ; there- 
after the title " Gentleman " appears following any 
legal mention of Shakespeare's name. In that same 
year the playwright purchased New Place in Strat- 
ford, the home he occupied after his retirement from 
the stage. This was the first of a series of invest- 
ments which imply a thrifty disposition as well as 
financial success. In 1597 also begins the publication 
of Shakespeare's plays. Sixteen of these were printed 
during the author's lifetime, and these were published 



THIRD PERIOD 



139 



without his authority or supervision. His revenue 
came from the theatre for which he wrote, and it was 
for his pecuniary interest that his productions should 
remain the exclusive property of the company to which 
he belonged. There was then no privilege of copy- 
right and no protection for an author if his work was 
stolen or published in imperfect form. But in the 
case of Shakespeare, the publication of the plays, be- 
ginning with Richard 11.^ Richard III.^ and Ror)ieo 
and Juliet^ in 1597, seems to indicate the rising fame 
of the dramatist, and the desire of readers to become 
acquainted with his works. The plays thus printed 
singly, previous to 1623, are distinguished by their form 
as the quarto texts. 

In 1598 Francis Meres, in his book Palladis Tamia 
The Wit Treasury^, enumerates the titles of twelve 
plays which in his opinion prove the English dramatist 
comparable to Plautus and Seneca among the Latins. 
This mention of the poet's work is exceedingly valua- 
ble in helping to fix the chronology of the plays. The 
famous Globe Theatre was built in 1599, and from 
the first Shakespeare appears to have owned a large 
share in the property ; there is a tradition that the 
young Earl of Southampton had once made the drama- 
tist a gift of XIOOO, which may have helped him to this 
investment. Such generosity from a patron of art is by 
no means incredible or unlikely. The Earl of Essex 
had bestowed on Francis Bacon a much larger gift. 

Now follows a distinct epoch in the dramatist's ca- 
reer. It is the period of his great trage- Third 
dies, the masterpieces of the English stage. 
Within the. first six or seven years of the new century 
were produced, in rapid succession, Julius Ccesar, 
Hamlet^ Othello^ Lear, Macbeth; also two serious 
comedies, All 's Well that Ends Well and Measure 



140 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



for Measure^ together with one "history," Troilus 
and Cressida. It may be that in this extraordinary 
grouping of material turbulent with passion, heavy 
with the gloom of human tragedy, the pathos and 
catastrophe of life, we should see only the marvelous 
creations of a philosopher whose imagination laid closer 
hold on the motives and emotions of man than that of 
any other dreamer or seer that we have ever known, 
and that the tone of these dramas is not to be regarded 
as especially significant of the poet's own mental atti- 
tude during this time. But such imaginings can hardly 
come from even the most profound of human minds 
until it has been harrowed by some stern experience. 
In Measure for Measure the Duke thus reasons with 
life : — 

" If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing 
That none but fools would keep," ^ 

— a sentiment in harmony with the desperate philoso- 
phy of Macbeth : — 

" It is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." ^ 

To this period of tragic mood has Dowden, not inap- 
propriately, applied the motto " Out of the Depths." 

Whatever may have directly inspired these intense 
studies of the sadder phases in life's drama, there cer- 
tainly was no falling off in the financial prosperity of 
Shakespeare, for large investments were made in 1602 
and 1605. Professionally, the company of which he 
was a member passed under the patronage of James I., 
and when that monarch made his royal entry into Lon- 
don, March 15, 1604, Shakespeare was one of the nine 
actors composing the band of King's Players who 
walked in the procession from the Tower to West- 
minster. And not long after this event he seems to 
1 Act III. scene i. 5. ^ V. scene v. 26. 



THE SONNETS 



141 



have left the stage of the theatre, although he continued 
to reside in London, and followed his calling as a play- 
wright for several years. 

The last group of dramas from Shakespeare's hand 
belongs to the period between 1607 and 1612. fourth 
It comprises two Roman "histories," Antony Period. 
and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Timon of Athens 
and Pericles represent the work of another dramatist, 
Shakespeare apparently having given only final touches 
to these plays. The finest compositions in this last 
group are the romantic dramas Cymbeline^ The Tem- 
pest^ and The Winter'' s Tale. The spirit of these 
romances is calm and joyous ; the stress of unjust sus- 
picion and cruel harshness is softened into reconciliation 
and atonement. The action lies wholly in the pleasant 
dreamland of a poet's imagination, and the happiness 
of childhood and youth reigns care-free in each conclu- 
sion. The pageant of King Henry VI 11.^ but slightly 
touched by the great dramatist, may be iijcluded as 
containing traces of Shakespeare's workmanship, the 
last dramatic labor of the poet so far as known. 

Shakespeare's Sonnets, which had been accumulat- 
ing for ten years or more, were published without the 
author's sanction in 1609. The story which The 
they seem to tell has caused much discussion, Sonnets, 
and various unsatisfactory attempts have been made 
to interpret them. If they contain anything more sub- 
stantial than the fiction of fancy, it is unlikely that 
they will ever be reduced to the details of fact. 

" With this key 
Shakespeare unlocked his heart," 

says Wordsworth. 

" Did Shakespeare ? If so, the less Shakespeare he ! " 

comments Browning.^ 

^ Wordsworth, Scorn not the Sonnet ; Browning", House. 



142 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



It must not be supposed that during Shakespeare's 
Last brilliant course in London his heart had been 

Years. entirely weaned from his family and houie in 
Stratford. There are traditions of visits more or less 
regularly paid ; and at the age of forty-five or six, the 
poet turned his back upon the excitements and conten- 
tions, the rivalries and triumphs of city life, apparently 
longing for the quiet retirement of his native town. 
An occasional trip to London to renew professional 
associations there might serve to break the monotony 
of village calm, while now and then old comrades 
dropped in upon his leisure at New Place. Thus in 
prosperous ease the poet lived at Stratford until the 
year 1616. His earliest biographer, Nicholas Eowe, 
upon the authority of John Ward, parish minister, 
says that in the spring of that year Shakespeare was 
unwell ; that he left his bed unwisely to join in the 
convivial entertainment of guests from London, of 
whom one was Ben J onson ; that a fever followed the 
merry-making, and that on the anniversary of his 
birth, April 23, he died. 

In our appreciation of Shakespeare's genius, we 
Shake- should be careful to maintain a reasonable 
speare's attitude toward the great poet-dramatist of 
our literature. The impressiveness of these 
tremendous dramas combines with the traditions of 
three centuries of praise to exalt this man so high as 
to remove him utterly from the level of common men. 
Yet Shakespeare possessed no superhuman gifts. Such 
an attitude of extravagant sentiment is as unworthy of 
its object as is that of indifference or ignorance. In 
all particulars Shakespeare was emphatically human, 
— in endowments, in development, in responsiveness 
to the spirit of his age, in his business instincts, his 
professional ambitions, his personal conduct, especially 



HIS PLOTS 



143 



in broad, frank sympathy with his fellow men ; nor 
did the master enter into the rich heritage of his genius 
until he had fulfilled the conditions to which genius 
itself is subject ; Shakespeare, even, must learn his art. 

Upon the superficial faults in Shakespeare's style 
we do not need to pause : his inconsistent grammar, 
his obscurities of phrase, the errors in statement of 
fact, the anachronisms, the over-readiness to word-play, 
the hyperbole, the gross exaggeration, the .pj^g^^^ 
bombast. Some of these faults were modified of Shake- 
with maturity ; some of them were the com- ^p®^®- 
mon faults of the age and shared by his contempora- 
ries. His art was greater than these and is not affected 
by such casual defects. 

Shakespeare was not a constructor of plots — he bor- 
rowed. The historical plays are drawn from His 
Holinshed and Hall, or from Plutarch's Lives. 
The sources of King Lear^ Macbeth, and Cymheline 
are also in the chronicles. Most of the comedies, and 
several of the tragedies, are mere dramatizations of 
English and Italian romances. The Comedy of Er- 
rors owes its material to Plautus ; the Midsummer 
Night^s Dream makes free use of Ovid. Two plays, 
Love's Labour 's Lost and The Tempest^ have not yet 
been traced to any known original, although there are 
internal evidences that the stories of these also are 
from French or Italian romance. One play alone. The 
Merry Wives of Windsor, seems to have a plot wholly 
original with Shakespeare. Yet this statement reflects 
in no wise upon the integrity or even the originality of 
the poet's . work ; rather it exalts his power in having 
been able thus to impart such extraordinary strength 
and life-likeness to characters devoid of these qualities 
in the hands of their first creators. In that field of 
composition which we call invention, Shakespeare was 



144 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



weak. Not only are liis plots thus borrowed, but the 
incidents which contribute to the action of the plays 
are often trivial, obviously artificial, and frequently in- 
adequate to serve as parts in the machinery of some 
great drama. The dramatic structure of the earlier 
plays is loose. Scene is carelessly added to scene, and 
there is not infrequently a lack of real organic unity 
and growth ; but after the poet reached the second 
period of his experience, this prime defect is overcome. 
He learned to be a master of dramatic technique. 

In the interpretation of human motives and pas- 
HisChar- sions, in the characterization of his dramatis 
acters. personce, Shakespeare is transcendent. He 
projects these men and woman absolutely outside his 
own personality. How perfectly individualized they 
are : Shylock and lago, Harry Percy and Harry Mon- 
mouth, Portia of Belmont and Portia of Rome, Sir 
John Falstaff and Sir Toby Belch, Launce and Launce- 
lot, the Fool in Twelfth Night and the Fool in Lear^ 
Ophelia, J uliet, Desdemona, Perdita, and Rosalind ; 
what variety in character and in motive for action. 
The proud integrity of Brutus is beguiled by the wily 
politician Cassius ; Othello's jealousy is inflamed by 
the villainous lago ; on the other hand, Macbeth, pos- 
sessed by his wicked ambition, is hurried headlong 
through crime to his own disaster, while Lear, inno- 
cent of guilt, is betrayed by his own willful f olly^ Ham- 
let falls a victim of circumstances and because of his 
inability to grapple with "outrageous fortune." Shake- 
speare's power in objective creation is without approach 
in literature. Two hundred and forty-six distinctly 
marked personalities have been counted in these plays, 
omitting those of doubtful authorship and those writ- 
ten in collaboration with others.^ Shakespeare's por- 

1 C. F. Johnson, Essentials of Literary Criticism. 



POET AND PHILOSOPHER 



145 



traitures are not untrue to life. His world is the 
world of romance, to be sure, rather than the world 
of realistic commonplace ; and in these representations 
of emotion, of passion, of guilt, remorse, despair, or of 
affection, devotion, sacrifice, repentance, reconciliation, 
there is an intensity of force, a crowding of details into 
moments, that naturally suggest an artificial rather 
than a realistic handling ; but this concentration of 
effect is incidental to the necessities of the stage, and 
indeed of all literary art, and includes a larger expres- 
sion of the truth than mere photographic transcripts 
of the more leisurely passages in ordinary life. 

We are to look upon Shakespeare as more than a 
playwright. In spirit as in form of expression he is 
a poet of the highest rank. The songs which are so 
richly strewn upon the dialogue of his scenes are lyrics 
of the finest order ; but in the perfect im- ^^^^ 
agery of his comparisons, the exquisite pic- pmioso- 
tures of natural beauty, the superb sweep of 
his splendid verse, his poetic power is as masterful as 
it is lavishly bestowed. In his view of life and his in- 
terpretation of the thoughts and actions of men, Shake- 
speare proves his right to a place among the sanest and 
wisest of philosophers. He reads men sympathetically 
and justly. 

" The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill 
together : our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped 
them not ; and our crimes would despair if they were not 
cherished by our virtues," 

says one of the poet's moralizing counselors ; ^ and it is 
this recognition of mingled good and ill in human life 
and conduct, his perfect freedom from cant or preju- 
dice, as well as the uncompromising soundness of his 

1 First Lord in All '.s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. scene iii. 67. 



146 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



moral judgment in the treatment of evil, that has made 
the great dramatist one of the great teachers of the 
world. 

" Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there x 
shall be no more cakes and ale ? " demands that in- 
dignant scapegrace, Sir Toby Belch, of the fanatical 
Malvolio ; ^ and we admit that Sir Toby is within the 
law : but our consciences applaud that profounder sen- 
timent, the ripened fruit of Shakespeare's maturer 
mind, to which he gives expression in The, Tempest^ 
subtlest of all his plays. Here Ariel, addressing the 
three men of sin, declares : — 

" The powers, delaying, not forgetting, have 
Incensed the seas and shores, yea, all the creatures 
Against your peace. . . . 

Whose wraths to guard you from, — 
Which here in this most desolate isle, else falls 
Upon your heads, — is nothing, but heart-sorrow 
And a clear life ensuing." ^ 

Finally, it is fair to ask, did Shakespeare have a 
conscious moral purpose in the creation of his dramas ? 
Hig Such a theory is not sustained by a study 

Purpose. of the plays. That a definite moral effect 
should be felt in these impressive compositions is in- 
evitable. The true artist dominates his work however 
objectively he may write ; he is still within as well as 
without the characters he creates. His ideals will not 
be wholly hidden ; and as he rouses sympathy with 
this success or with that defeat, so will he indicate the 
direction in which his judgment falls. One thing is 
sure : there is no allegory in Shakespeare's plays. His 
creatures are neither caricatures nor types ; they are 
as truly real as though they were flesh and blood. 
Komeo, Othello, Hotspur, Hamlet, are not types pre- 

1 Twelfth Night, Act II. scene iii. 105. ^ III. scene iii. 



BEN JONSON 



147 



senting passion of love, jealousy, rashness, indecision ; 
they are mm, — men who are recognized as governed 
strongly by these qualities, yet moving with all the 
freedom and uncertainty of men. The great drama- 
tist has himself avowed his only conscious purpose in 
that often quoted comment upon the ethics of his 
craft : — 

" The purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and 
now, was and is, to hold, as 't were, the mirror up to Nature, 
to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and 
the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." ^ 

This we may assume upon the authority of Shakespeare 

himself to have been the ideal of his art. 

Next to Shakespeare's name, that of Ben Jonson is 

best known in the list of those who were asso- „ , 

Jon- 

ciated with the theatre in the time of Eliza- son,i573?- 
beth and James. Of all the dramatists con- 
tinning after Shakespeare's death, he was the greatest. 
Jonson was born in London about 1573. His father 
was a clergyman ; but he had been a month dead when 
his son was born, and his mother marrying again, the 
boy had for stepfather a master bricklayer, who may 
have compelled him to learn that trade. He was edu- 
cated, however, in Westminster School, and then for a 
brief term at Cambridge. During his youth he had 
also enlisted as a soldier, and had been with the army 
in the Netherlands. But Ben Jonson was naturally a 
scholar, and soon betook himself to writing for the 
stage. His name is mentioned by Frances Meres ^ in 
1598 as one of our best for Tragedie." Much of his 
early work was done in collaboration with others. In 
1598 he produced an excellent comedy. Every Man in 
his Humour^ a play which Shakespeare is said to have 
secured for his own company, and in the presentation 
^ Hamlet^ Act III. scene ii. ^ ggg page 75. 



148 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



of which lie certainly acted a part. In 1599 there 
followed a companion piece in Every Man out of his 
Humour ; the word humour in these titles being used 
in the sense of caprice, vagary, or hobby. Jon son wrote 
many masques for presentation at court. The masque 
was a form of drama elaborately arranged for spec- 
tacular effect ; the subjects were usually mythological 
or took the form of allegory ; the success of the masque 
was aided by beautiful costumes and ingenious me- 
chanical eifects. The most successful of Jonson's 
masques was Cynthia s Revels (1600). He was the 
author of two tragedies, Sejanus (1603) and Catiline 
(1611) ; these dramas are characterized by an abun- 
dance of classical learning, but are cold and heavy. 
Jonson's most important comedies are Volpone^ or 
the Fox (1605), Ejncoene^ or the Silent Woman 
(1609), and The Alchemist (1610) ; of which the last- 
named is regarded as a masterpiece. This play is re- 
markable for its very clever plot, and for the technical 
skill displayed in unfolding the details of the intrigue ; 
it is also a good example of Jonson's learning, for it is 
fairly crammed with the lore of alchemy, and of roguery 
as well. 

The relations existing between Jonson and Shake- 
speare are of particular interest. Although 
Jonson Jonson was indebted to Shakespeare, if tra- 
Shake- dition be true, for his introduction to the stage, 
he represented a different school of writing and 
a different dramatic ideal. Morever, it is stated that 
he was jealous of the other's superior success, and that 
the two poets quarreled. Probably too much has been 
made of this latter statement, although of Jonson's 
irascible temper and quickness to take offense there is 
no doubt. But Jonson was a classical scholar, and was 
devoted to the models of the ancient stage ; he there- 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEAEE 



149 



fore criticised the extravagance and license of dramatists 
like Marlowe and Shakespeare, whose methods he re- 
garded as antagonistic to the highest art. That there 
was, save in this regard, genuine and hearty sympathy 
between these two gifted men need not be doubted, nor 
that each was appreciative of the other's peculiar gifts. 

Thomas Fuller, who was born in 1608, and was well 
acquainted in his day with some who had been com- 
rades with these noted characters and had survived 
them, declares as follows : — 

" Many were the wit-combats betwixt him [Shakespeare] 
and Ben Jonson ; which two I beheld like a Spanish great 
galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, hke 
the former, was built higher in learning ; solid, but slow in 
his performances ; Shakespeare, with the Enghsh man-of- 
war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all 
tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the 
quickness of his wit and invention." ^ 

To the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays, Ben 
Jonson contributed a poetical dedication of the book, 
which has furnished us with some of our most apt ex- 
pressions of appreciation concerning our great poet : — 

" Soul of the ag-e ! 
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage ! " 

" He was not of an age, but for all time ! " 

" Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 
To see thee in our waters yet appeare, 
And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames 
That so did take Eliza and our James ! " 

In a little volume of prose, to which he gave the 
fanciful name of Timher ; or Discoveries Made upon 
Men and Matter^ Jonson gathered an interesting col- 
lection of paragraphs on various topics : bits of wis- 
dom, epigrams, curious facts, criticism, brief essays, 

1 WortMes of JVarwickshire. 



150 



FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



not unworthily compared to similar examples in Ba- 
con's works ; and there is one paragraph of comment 
on the hasty composition of Shakespeare which closes 
with this tribute ; — 

"I loved the man and honor his memory, on this side 
idolatry, as much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an 
open and free nature ; had an excellent phantasy, brave no- 
tions, and gentle expressions." 

Ben Jonson was the first officially appointed poet- 
laureate, although the title had been, by way of com- 
pliment, conferred upon several earlier poets. For 
some years he enjoyed prosperity, the poet-dramatist of 
the court, literary lion and dictator among the lesser 
writers, with whom the poet was extremely popular. 
Later he fell into misfortune ; he became involved in 
debt, paralysis attacked him, and in 1637 he died in 
poverty. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, and 
through the charity of a stranger it is said, a work- 
man was hired to cut the simple but suggestive epitaph 
which identifies his grave : " O Rare Ben Jonson." 

Of the dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare 

and Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont (1586- 
Beaumont ^ 
and 1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) are 

Fletcher. famous for their literary partnership of long 
standing. Beaumont was an intimate friend of Jon- 
son, and Dryden declares that the latter regularly 
took his own compositions to Beaumont for criticism. 
Beaumont and Fletcher were the authors of some fifty 
plays, of which Philaster and The Maid^s Tragedy 
are the best. After the death of Beaumont, Fletcher 
collaborated with other dramatists. He had, previous 
to that, worked together with Shakespeare upon the 
ITing Henry VIII. and, in all probability, upon The 
Two Nohle Kinsmen^ which is sometimes included, as 
a doubtful play, with Shakespeare's works. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 151 



Philip Massinger (1583-1638), Thomas Middleton 
(1570 ?-1667), Thomas Dekker, John Ford (1586- 
1639 ?), Thomas Heywood, William Rowley, Lggggj 
Cyril Tourneur, John Webster, John Marston Drama- 
(1575-1634), and George Chapman (1559- 
1634) were all employed, with greater or less success, 
in contributing to the distinction of the Elizabethan 
stage. These men were contemporaries, comrades, and 
rivals, professionally, with the great leaders of their 
craft. They were all university men, strong intellec- 
tually and in artistic power ; but the over-topping 
genius of Shakespeare is never so conspicuous as when 
his works are placed in contrast to theirs. 

After Shakespeare's time there followed a percep- 
tible decline in the drama. Not only was „ „ 

• n 1 Decline 
there a loss of power among writers for the of the 

stage, but the growing spirit of the Puritan 
movement looked with less and less tolerance upon the 
increasing license of the theatre. The more sober- 
minded had never favored it, and regarded this form of 
amusement with hostility. As the drama decayed, the 
stage fell into disrepute, and at the outbreak of civil 
war the theatres were closed altogether. 

In order to appreciate the real performance of Shake- 
speare and his influence upon the English stage, gugges- 
it would be best for the student to read one or tionsfor 
more of the pre-Shakespearian plays before be- ^^^^y- 
ginning a study of the dramatist's own work. All study of 
the plays should be chronological. (The general subject of 
the chronology of the Shakespearian dramas is discussed in 
Dowden's valuable Shakespeare Primer.) One might weU 
begin with a play of the first group, Love's Labour 's Lost. 
A Midsummer Night 's Dream may very well be studied in 
close connection with this comedy, and comparisons made 
between the two. 



152 



FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



I. Love's Labour 's Lost. Sidney Lee, in his Life of 
Shakespeare, has noted many facts of interest concerning the 
names of the characters introduced. The story of this early 
play is slight, and no grave problems are involved. The sub- 
title, " a pleasant conceited comedy," adequately describes it. 
The situation and ensuing complications suggest comparison 
with the story of The Princess, by Tennyson. We should note 
how closely in this play the dramatist observes the ancient 
rule of " the unities " ; and if there is any doubt as to the 
significance of that rule, enjoined by Aristotle, it should be 
carefully studied. Very shortly Shakespeare broke away 
from this rule entirely, returning to it in The Tempest alone 
of all his maturer plays. A feature peculiar to this early 
group of dramas is the preponderance of rhyme. If one 
counts the rhymes in Love's Labour 's Lost, he will find that 
there are, in the dialogue of the play, twice as many rhym- 
ing verses as verses without rhyme. As the poet advanced 
in his work of composition, he gradually discarded this form 
of verse. An interesting comparison may be made in this 
respect with some late play, noting the gain in strength and 
beauty due to the change. Attention should be given to the 
diction. The extravagant use of word-play is objectionable. 
Lines like these are noticeable : " And then grace us in the 
disgrace of death." " Your oath is pass'di to pass away from 
these." " Of his Almighty dreadful little might.'" " Do 
meet, as at a, fair, in hev fair cheek." Such examples may 
be noted. 

There is some satire involved in the humor of the comedy ; 
the character of Don Armado, the fantastical Spaniard, is in- 
tended to present in some degree the grotesque style of the 
euphuists in the extravagance of his comparisons, the strange 
figures used by him, the overwhelming frequency of allitera- 
tion and antithesis in his language ; for illustration, turn to 
Don Armado's speech at the end of Act I., and to the letter 
read by Boyet in Act IV. scene i. A similar style of diction, 
hardly less grotesque, is found, however, in several of the 
speeches addressed by the King and his companions. Indicate 
some of the passages in which Shakespeare makes serious use 



THE 

TRAGEDY 

OF 

HAMLET 
Prince of Denmarke. 

BY 

ILLIAM Shakespeare. 

Newly imprinted and enlarged to almoilas itiiich 
sgaine as itwas5accordingto the true 
and perfe6l Coppy» 




AT LONDON. 
Printed Cot hhn Smethmcke andare to befold at hiV/ltoppe, 
is Sainj Dfi»fioyis Charoh ycard ia FIcetfti€€t. 
Vndcr theDlaiUi^ 1 1 



FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF HAMLET IN 
THE QUARTO TEXTS (1611) 
(Reproduced from the original copy in the Boston Public Library.) 



154 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



of euphuistic language. In studying these superficial quali- 
ties of the play, its many beauties of expression, the charm- 
ing pictures of landscape and country scenery, the quality of 
the songs and other lyric passages should not be overlooked. 
Perhaps there are reminiscences here of Shakespeare's youth, 
which was not very far behind him, when he wrote of 

" . . . daisies pied and violets blue 
And lady smocks all silver white." 

What opportunity did the poet have, as a boy, to cultivate a 
taste for nature, and to gain intimate acquaintance with 
nature's ways ? 

In spite of the obvious unreality of the King's vow and 
subsequent develoj^ments, there is perceptible charm in the 
unfolding of this simple plot. Its freshness and vivacity are 
very taking. The sentiment never grows serious, although 
there are some conspicuous passages in the manner that later 
we call Shakespearian. This we find in the reply of the 
Princess to Boyet's labored compliment (II. i. 13) : — 

" Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, 
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise," 

and also in the words of Biron, following the announcement 
of the death of the King of France (V. ii. 7 43) : — 

" Honest plain words best pierce the ear of g-rief," 

This is preeminently a comedy of wit. As illustrating 
the finer play of repartee, study the scene which contains 
the encounter of the Princess and her ladies with the gentle- 
men of the King's court (Y. ii. 80-266). Compare with the 
spirit of this the coarser humor in the scenes which intro- 
duce the low-comedy characters of the sub-plot. 

Of the characters in this play, only two, Biron (pronounced 
Be-roon') and Rosaline, contain much promise of richness and 
power of imagination. It would be interesting to examine 
carefully the passages which make these personages preemi- 
nent, and to determine what artistic value Biron and Rosa- 
line possess. Notice the careful ^;araZZeZw?7i followed in the 
speeches of these and the other characters ; the pairing-off 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 155 



of courtiers and ladies : is this a natural or an artificial 
adjustment of things ? Do you find such an orderliness in 
other of the early plays, — in the later ones, the tragedies, 
for example ? 

It will hardly be worth while to spend much time in 
examining the technique of this slight drama. It is put 
together loosely, and its only purpose is to supply a series of 
amusing incidents that appeal to eye and ear. The comic 
episodes introducing the Schoolmaster, the Curate, the Span- 
iard, the Fool, and the Boy (all typical characters of the older 
stage), and their attempt to present the interlude of the 
Nine Worthies, are very likely an inspiration, if not an actual 
reminiscence, of what Shakespeare had seen, about his home, 
in the efforts of village art. 

As representative comedies of the second period, we may 
take the Mercliant of Venice and As You Like It. If 
there be opportunity for further study, the First Part of 
King Henry IV. and Twelfth Night should be added. 

II. The Merchant of Venice. Here we find the 
dramatist in much more serious mood. A reading of the 
play will reveal his growing maturity of mind and his pos- 
session of far greater power. As a beginning of the study, 
separate the two stories of the pound of flesh and the three 
caskets y note the distinct separation of locality and setting 
in each. Now see how the two stories are bound together in 
the common plot : what are the links connecting them ? 
What is to be said of the elopement of Lorenzo and Jessica 
as a dramatic incident in this comedy ? 

The opening scene of the drama is felt to be significant in 
suggesting the tone of the action that follows : explain this 
somewhat. What do you consider the dramatic value of the 
fifth act? Is it superfluous, or has it some artistic use? 
Where is the point of climax in the story of Bassanio's for- 
tunes? Where the point of most intense interest in the 
misfortunes of Antonio ? Where occurs the first suggestion 
of Antonio's losses ? Point out the successive confirmations 
up to the moment of assurance. Where are we informed — 
and under what circumstances — that the argosies are safe ? 



156 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



Is there any way to account for the false rumors of their 
loss ? 

Who is the hero of this drama ? Which character inter- 
ests you most ? Make a special study of " Old Shylock." 
What motives for his persecution of Antonio do you find in 
his own words (1. iii. and III. i.), — in Antonio's words 
(III. iii.) ? What are his relations to the Christians, — to 
his household, — to his nation ? Do you find any justifica- 
tion for the Jew in his hatred, — or grounds for sympathy 
with him in his defeat ? How do you regard the conclusion 
of the trial-scene, — is it just ? Study the personality of 
Portia. What are the prominent traits in her character ? 
What do you think of her interpretation of the law, — of her 
plea for mercy ? Is Portia maidenly ? Does she obey the 
spirit of her father's will ? Was there any reasonableness 
in such a will ? Describe Antonio ; Bassanio ; Launcelot 
Gobbo. Cite some descriptive passages which especially 
please you. Do you find material for quotation here ? Is 
there any more of realism in this play than in Love's La- 
hour 's Lost ? Wherein do the essential differences lie ? 
What makes this play, so serious in motive, a comedy ? 

III. As You Like It. Here again we have an inter- 
weaving of two stories in the creation of a double plot, an 
arrangement attractive to Shakespeare. Frederick's jeal- 
ousy and banishment of Rosalind is paralleled in Oliver's ill 
treatment of Orlando. The love of Orlando and Rosalind 
is the motive which unites the threads and gives unity to 
the plot as a whole. As in Love's Labour 's Lost, there is a 
comic sub-plot in the wooing of Audrey by William and 
Touchstone, duplicated in the courtship of Phoebe by Silvius. 
Study the grouping of all these characters, and follow their 
relations throughout the action. Compare the personalities 
of Rosalind and Portia ; Orlando and Bassanio ; Touchstone 
and Launcelot Gobbo. The character of Biron is sometimes 
taken as the prototype of Jaques ; Rosaline is also compared 
with Rosalind : what resemblance do you see ? 

Compare the three scenes in the first act in As You Like 
It with the corresponding scenes in The Merchant of Venice, 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 157 



Study the dramatic structure of these scenes : note those sec- 
tions which merely explain the situation ; the lines which 
indicate the beginning and progress of the action, — for 
example, the quarrel between Orlando and Oliver, and the 
suggestions which lead to the wrestling-match ; also the 
points in Bassanio's narrative that occasion Antonio's re- 
solve. What similarity do you observe in Shakespeare's 
introduction of these two heroines ? Follow the details of 
the action which brings Rosalind and Orlando together. 
What resemblance is there between Rosalind's fortunes and 
those of Orlando ? What passages in the first act of each 
play are devoted to characterization ? Notice the contrast in 
the tone of these two plays as suggested by these opening 
acts ; and the couplets which complete the act in both. 

Do you see any significance in the localization of Arden 
and Belmont ? It is impossible to find their counterparts 
on any map ; each is a place of retreat from the confused 
world of strife in which these people are first discovered, 
and where their fortunes become complicated and intolera- 
ble. In Belmont is arranged the plan by which Antonio's 
predicament is resolved ; Portia's gardens are associated with 
music, moonlight, and the peaceful happiness of love. Ar- 
den, the home of shepherds, is an asylum for the exiles, a 
rendezvous for those who are in trouble ; here their fortunes 
are bettered and their wrongs righted. Such retreats are 
often found in the Elizabethan romance, of which Lodge's 
Rosalind is a type. This pretty romance, from which 
Shakespeare took the story of his comedy, should be read in 
connection with the play ; it is found entire in some of the 
editions of the drama, and may be had for ten cents in Gas- 
sell's National Library. Again take note of such passages 
as particularly impress with their beauty. Commit to mem- 
ory the speech of the Duke (II. i. 1-16) and Jaques's 
famous allegory, " All the world 's a stage " (II. vii. 139). 

IV. Julius C^sar. In reading this play, the student 
should, if possible, compare the lives of Caesar, Brutus, and 
Mark Antony as given by Plutarch, using a copy of North's 
translation, which was the version used by Shakespeare as 



158 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



the source of his material. He will be surprised at the poet's 
close adherence to the text of Plutarch. 

The opening scene should be examined with reference to 
its indications of what is to follow, as well as of what has 
passed. After the play has been read and the plot mastered, 
the reader should study the dramatist's treatment of " the 
mightiest Julius " — as he terms him elsewhere.-^ What 
reason is there why Caesar's na^me rather than that of Brutus 
should form the title of the play ? Analyze the portraiture. 
Wherein does boastf ulness appear, — superstition, — weak- 
ness, — strength ? Is there ground for such a conception of 
this character in history ? What significance do you detect 
in the appearance of Caesar's ghost in Act. V., — in the last 
words spoken by Cassius and Brutus ? 

Now study the characterization of Brutus, comparing him 
throughout with Cassius. What expressions in the first en- 
counter of the two suggest that Brutus is already prepared 
to oppose Csesar ? Wherein does his humane spirit reveal 
itself ? Wherein his impulsive temperament ? What argu- 
ment most appeals to Brutus in moving him to join the con- 
spiracy ? In what respect is Cassius superior to Brutus, — 
in what inferior ? Note well Antony's tribute to the integrity 
of Brutus. Where was Brutus's mistake ? 

Analyze the portraiture of Antony. What are the real 
reasons for his success ? Do you feel that he is honest in his 
protestations of affection ? The subsequent career of this 
youth, as depicted in Antony and Cleopatra, should be fol- 
lowed in this connection. 

The portrait of Portia is a masterpiece. Less than one 
hundred lines are spoken by this character, yet it is as dis- 
tinct and strong as any that Shakespeare ever created. Por- 
tia, like Brutus, is a stoic, yet note how her wifely affection 
and fears assert themselves in the scene with Lucius (11. iv.). 

None of Shakespeare's other plays is so filled with fine 
declamatory passages as this ; their dignity and stateliness 

1 Hamlet, I. i. 114. Compare other allusions to Julius Csesar in the 
plays : Ham. V. i. ; A. Y. L. LY . ii. ; //. K. H. IV. I. i. ; E. H V. 
V. ; K. Rich. III. III. i. etc. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



159 



are most impressiye. A careful reading will fix them easily 
in memory. 

The Great Tragedies. Of the principal tragic dra- 
mas, two may be selected for special study, although all 
must be read hj one who wishes to know the power of 
Shakespeare. Here his genius is absolute. The element 
in tragedy which rouses human interest is not the sadness of 
disaster, but the thrilling effect of the struggle which domi- 
nates the action ; the hero must contend. The Greeks 
termed the her« of tragedy the protagonist ; and hence Milton 
names his dramatic poem, modeled after the ancient drama, 
SanisoTi Agonijstes, — the struggling Samson. In tragedy 
the ant&gQmzuig force is stronger than the hero, and the 
drama ends in catastrophe and defeat. Now in the noblest 
form of tragedy our interest is centred not on a mere phys- 
ical struggle, b«t on a mental conflict. This is the case in 
each of the two plays chosen : in Hamlet we have a strug- 
gle against temperament and circumstance ; in Ilacheth, a 
conflict between the forces of good and ill in a human soul. 
The one is the tragedy of a scholar ; the other of a soldier. 

V. HAMJiET. The tragedy of Hamlet is commonly re- 
garded as Shakespeare's masterpiece. None of his plays is 
more popular on the stage ; none other contains so many prob- 
lems for the -critic and the interpreter. Volumes have been 
written upon tie character of the Prince, but the mystery of 
Hamlet is the old and sacred mystery of personality which 
must ever baffle the most acute. Hamlet's story begins with 
the soliloquy (I. ii.) that shows his deep dejection over his 
mother's o'er-hasty marriage. In this frame of mind he 
hears from Horatio the report of the apparition. Note the 
effect oi Horatio's story on Hamlet : would you think that 
the latter suspects any crime ? What expressions here and 
in scene v- enforce this probability ? Notice carefully the 
Ghost's words to Hamlet, and their effect. Especially signi- 
ficant is Hamlet's declaration (I. v. 29-31), which forms 
the starting-point of the action, which is ever the purpose of 
Hamlet's soul, and which, in the tragic irony of his fate, he 
is never to fulfill. Notice the force of lines 85, 86 : — 



160 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE . 



" Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive 
Against thy mother aught." 

Note the perturbed condition of Hamlet's mind in the rest 
of the scene, and also his hinted purpose in lines 17 0, 180. 

Act II. emphasizes Hamlet's dilatoriness. How swift was 
to be his flight to revenge ; yet nothing has been done, 
although the ambassadors sent to Norway (I. ii.) have made 
the journey, performed their mission, and here are present 
to report (11. ii.). The "antic disposition" assumed by the 
Prince is exhibited in the dialogue with Polonius (lines 17 0- 
216), but is quickly laid aside in the conversation with Ro- 
sencrantz and Guildenstern (lines 220-370). Particularly 
interesting is Hamlet's discourse with the players (lines 
409-530) ; then, most important of all, comes the soliloquy 
which closes the act. Hamlet's indecision is the fatal weak- 
ness which develops all the tragedy of the play. 

The third act is always a point of intense interest in the 
serious drama. Here is the crisis of the action, the turning- 
point, or the opportunity for one. In the great third act of 
this tragedy, there are four scenes of vital importance. In 
the first Hamlet breaks with Ophelia ; it is the crisis in her 
career. The apparent harshness of the Prince is for a kindly 
purpose ; his counsel, " Get thee to a nunnery," is honest and 
sound. There is a sharper tone when Hamlet has a glimpse 
of Claudius with Polonius spying at his back ; this is coin- 
cident with the question, " Where 's your father ? " The 
second scene is the most spectacular one in the drama ; the 
climax in the cry of the guilty king for " lights," and his 
evident discomfiture, leave Hamlet no possible pretext of 
doubt upon which to base his indecision. In the following 
scene, quiet in comparison with the preceding, we have, 
nevertheless, the important crisis of the drama. Now Ham- 
let has his opportunity to kill Claudius, and yet he hesitates. 
As to the soundness of Hamlet's speculation, which disarms 
his purpose, the king's own comment is sufiiciently clear 
(lines 97, 98) ; Claudius is a better theologian than is the 
young Wittenberg student, on this occasion at least. But 
the guilty king is passing his crisis also, — morally; con- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



161 



science has stabbed him to the point of true repentance, con- 
fession, and the abandonment of the fruits of crime, and there 
he halts. Scene iv. is intensely pathetic. Here Gertrude 
learns the truth regarding her own frailty ; and her con- 
science is pricked also, — in vain. Again the Ghost appears 
to whet the almost blunted purpose of the Prince, and to 
interpose between distracted mother and more distracted 
son, — " nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught ! " 

Act IV. brings no accomplishment of Hamlet's purpose. 
In the fourth scene his fault is set before him in a striking 
manner. The reader now should turn back to previous 
scenes in which reference is made to Norway and to For- 
tinbras : what then appeared as slight and disconnected 
incidents now take on significance in Hamlet's remarkable so- 
liloquy (IV. iv. 32-66). Note the contrast between these 
princes. Why, else, this audible tramp of foreign soldiery, 
this ever-recurring hint of the vigorous, combative, hot- 
blooded Norwegian? Laertes and Fortinbras, impulsive, 
passionate, are the natural foils to Hamlet, and emphasize 
his considerate moderation. Laertes, spoiled by his Paris 
training, yields to most foul temptation (his own suggestion), 
and covers his name with everlasting disgrace, himself a 
victim of his own contemptible plot. Fortinbras, on the 
other hand, always manly, always prince-like, — though 
scarcely more than the shadow of his presence falls across 
the stage, — redeems the spirit of the tragedy, and at last, 
by Hamlet's voice, assumes the Danish crown. 

The last act opens with a strange, grotesquely comic scene, 
the only low-comedy in the drama, except that furnished by 
Hamlet's encounters with Polonius. Yet its entire effect is 
impressive : why ? What can be said for the congruities of 
such an interlude in such connection ? Note Hamlet's char- 
acteristic mood in his meditation upon Y'orick's skull. What 
significance in his sudden fierce quarrel with Laertes in the 
grave ? What is his probable feeling for Ophelia ? Notice 
the foreboding expressed by Hamlet in the second scene, — 
his apparent fatalism. Study the effective composition of 
the catastrophe ; enumerate the successive incidents. What 



162 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



appropriateness is there in the injunction laid upon Horatio ? 
Has Hamlet obeyed the Ghost's command ? 

This brief comment should suggest other Knes of analysis 
in the interpretation of Shakespeare's Frince. The ques- 
tion of Hamlet's sanity may be considered, but af ter all that 
is a problem subordinate to the dramatic idea of the play. 
More profitable is it to follow the real tragic line of the drama 
found in the situation of a hero, responsibley yet by training 
and temperament unfitted to play his part : — 

" The time is out of joint, — cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right I (L v. 189.) 

Special attention should be directed to all of Hamlet's 
soliloquies. In the soliloquy the dramatist always reveals 
the inmost thought of his character ; these utterances are 
confidential and sincere. The famous passage beginning 
" To be, or not to be " (III. i. 56) is a case in point. The 
Prince of Denmark is never nearer the heart of his own 
tragic history than in lines 83-88. Here is the key to his 
character. Again he touches it in the soliloquy, IV. iv. 40- 
46. It should be noted also that this royal youth is not 
only the centre of all that moves in the great drama — he 
is practically alone amid the forces that are arrayed against 
him. Who are the antagonizing characters in this play ? 
Should not Ophelia be numbered with them ? On the other 
hand, who are with Hamlet ? Marcellus, Bernardo, do not 
count ; the players are only the instrument in his hand. The 
Ghost is not unfriendly, but cannot be looked upon as a cham- 
pion or a coadjutor. It does not come to bring a father's 
comfort, but appears, a dread visitant of terror, to goad 
Hamlet to his task. Horatio, Hamlet's only confidant, is a 
student like himself — no more than Hamlet a man of action. 
The only positive service that he can render to his friend is 
to absent himself from felicity awhile, and in this harsh 
world draw his breath in pain to tell Lord Hamlet's story. 

All the characters in this play call for study. Claudius, 
experienced, shrewd, desperate, under the burden of his 
guilt : what are the indications of his attitude toward Ham- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 163 



let ? Gertrude, guiltless of murder, but weak and morally 
degraded by her infatuation with her husband's slayer. Polo- 
nius, a worldly-wise, conceited, meddlesome old man : whence 
has he the counsel which he administers with such unction to 
Laertes ? What is the real spirit of his advice ? It is his 
preference " by indirections, to seek directions out " (II. i. 
66). Notice his method toward his son and daughter. Is 
it not his genius for spying that brings his death ? Laertes 
is the type of courtier appropriate to Elsinore ; contrast the 
influence of Paris with that of Wittenberg. What contrary 
motives bring Laertes and Horatio to the court ? Pursue the 
contrast between Laertes and Hamlet in the event of a father's 
death. Ophelia is a pathetic rather than a tragic heroine. 
She is foredoomed to suffer. Too weak of will to attempt a 
single struggle, she buries her love in hopelessness and sub- 
mits to be made a tool. Yet in character she is blameless, 
an innocent victim of harsh circumstance. Grief completely 
destroys her reason ; she is not responsible for her death. 
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are mere echoes of the court ; 
shallow characters, they might exchange their names and no 
one be the wiser. Willing tools, they are most cleverly 
dispatched by their own frailty and by Prince Hamlet's 
superior cunning. The Ghost is a most important factor 
in the play. It is an intensely poetical conception — this 
shadowy protest of the dead against the unhindered pros- 
perity of guilt. Shakespeare's introduction of supernatural 
visitants is always interesting, but never elsewhere so im- 
pressive as here. In Richard III. ^ Julius Ccesar, Macbeth, 
they appear, mere momentary apparitions ; but here, in royal 
dignity and kingly mien, old Hamlet's perturbed spirit walks 
— not to affright the murderer, not to awaken pity, or to 
foretell defeat, but to disabuse the ear of Denmark and chal- 
lenge justice against a usurper of the crown. An added 
interest attaches to this creation because Shakespeare played 
the part himself, and it was reckoned the " top of his per- 
formance." 

VI. Macbeth. Like Hamlet, this is a romantic tragedy, 
in which the dramatist introduces a supernatural element in 



164 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



the part played by the Weird Sisters, as well as in the appa- 
rition of Banquo's ghost. Notice the wonderful poetry of 
this play : point out passages which the fancy of the poet 
has made rich with imagery. Note the sweep and rush of 
the movement, the inexorable rapidity of the action. How 
does the opening scene prepare for the story of evil that fol- 
lows ? Study the action of the drama in this diagram : — 



Murder of 
Banquo. 



Possession of Crown, 



II. 

Murder of Duncan. 




The Weird Sisters. 




It will be seen that the crisis of the play is in the murder 
of Banquo ; why should this incident, rather than the mur- 
der of King Duncan, form the dramatic crisis ? What simi- 
larity in the two murders first rouses general suspicion 
against Macbeth ? What is the full significance of Fleance's 
escape ? Now point out how Macbeth's successive acts of 
tyranny conduce to his own downfall. Especially study the 
Macduff motive : how has Macbeth prepared an avenger of 
his own wicked deeds ? Make a similar examination of his 
intercourse with the Weird Sisters. Show how ironically their 
predictions serve to betray their victim. 

In analyzing the character of Macbeth, two problems are 
to be considered : (1) his relation to the Weird Sisters ; 
(2) his relation to Lady Macbeth. Upon the solution of 
these two problems rests the question of Macbeth's moral 
responsibility for his crimes. First, is it the salutation of 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



165 



these strange creatures on the blasted heath that suggests 
the murder of King Duncan ? Study the immediate effect 
of their prediction on Macbeth. Why, do you think, does 
he say, " Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more," — 
and again, " Would they had staid " ? What significance do 
you find in the conversations with Lady Macbeth, scenes 
vi. and vii. ? It is well to inquire how far into the future 
these mysterious beings really see, and to what extent they 
are actually able to predict. The invocation of Lady Mac- 
beth to the " murthering ministers " who in their " sightless 
substances " wait on nature's mischief is apparently addressed 
to them. They are by no means witches in the vulgar appli- 
cation of that word ; rather does the number and the char- 
acter of these apparitions connect them in some sort with 
the Fates. The older meaning of the word wyrd was fate. 
They may indicate the subtle intent of Macbeth's half-con- 
scious purpose ; their power seems to be only over those who 
are evilly inclined ; they seem to understand the thought of 
their victim, to harp his own imaginings, and to lure him 
on in the direction of his desires, encouraging him to attempt 
the course he is inclined to follow. Compare Genesis iv. 7 : 
" If thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door." 

Secondly, as to the other problem ; it should be noted that 
, Lady Macbeth is not so much a foil to her husband as a 
complement ; she is not used for the purpose of contrast so 
much as to supply his defect. It is possible to interpret her 
character as that of a woman selfishly ambitious to be queen, 
inciting her husband to a crime, and goading him on to the 
murder ; in which case we must consider her the incarna- 
tion of aU cruelty and wickedness, a fiend in woman's form. 
We may, on the other hand, interpret her action as based on 
her love for Macbeth, and find a motive for her obvious 
wickedness in the desire that he may possess the utmost fruit 
of his ambition. Which interpretation seems more just ? 
The former was long held to be correct ; the latter has more 
advocates now. In studying her character, note the signs of 
weakness which develop immediately after the murder of the 
king. Why does not Macbeth disclose to his wife his plans 



16& FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



for the murder of Banquo ? What indications of tender feel- 
ing do you find shown by Lady Macbeth in her effort to 
protect her husband on the appearance of Banquo's ghost ? 

Study both these characters with reference to their ex- 
pression before the murder of Duncan and afterward. What 
remarkable exchange of character do you discover in this 
double development ? Particularly note the desperate force 
displayed by Macbeth as his doom approaches. 

The character of Banquo is in admirable contrast to that 
of the Thane. Point out some of the differences between 
these two men. Do not fail to note the intense pathos of the 
passage wherein Macduff learns of his bereavement (IV. 
iii. 200-240). 

Read the account of the real Macbeth as given by Holin- 
shed, and included in many of the introductions to the play. 
In what way has Shakespeare enlarged his theme to the point 
of universality in its application ? What, to your mind, is 
the moral purpose of this play ? 

Note, So much for the suggested lines of study in the 
plays recommended. Nothing has been said about textual 
criticism, investigation of sources, the helps and hindrances 
of commentators ; very little concerning the philosophy or 
ethics involved. The purpose has been briefly to suggest 
some direction of the thought that may lead unconsciously 
to a degree of appreciation for the spirit of these great 
compositions, and a feeling for the art of the great drama- 
tist who wrought them. Further details of analysis in inter- 
pretation and technique may better be left to a more mature 
and disciplined age. 

If possible, the reading of the plays should be continued 
until all the important comedies and tragedies have been in- 
cluded. A special study should be made of the historical 
plays, which form a group by themselves ; these are of greater 
value than is commonly realized. Taken together these Eng- 
lish " histories " cover the period of the great civil wars, 
which we call the Wars of the Roses. As a series, far from 
exultant in tone, they seem to sound the refrain, " Lest we 
forget, lest we forget ! " Their theme is nationality, and 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



167 



their warning against discord is most impressive. King 
John, King Henry V., and Richard III. are especially rec- 
ommended. 

Of the hundreds of volumes bearing upon Shakespeare and 
his works, these few are mentioned as helpful and -q^^-^^ ^^^^ 
generally easy of access. Of editions, those de- may toe used 
voting a single volume to a play, with introduc- ■"^^^^^ 
tion and notes, are most desirable. The texts edited by 
William J, Rolfe (American Book Co.) are popular ; those 
edited by Henry N. Hudson (Ginn) are also standard ; the 
most modern texts of this character are in the Ai^den Edition 
(Heath), and the arrangement of this edition is admirable. 
The plays Julius CcEsar, As You Like It, Merchant of 
Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth, are included in the Riverside 
Literature Series (Houghton, Mifflin and - Company). 
These are carefully edited and inexpensive. The authori- 
tative text of Shakespeare's plays is that of the Cambridge 
Shahespeare (9 vols.), edited by William Aldis Wright. 
The Henry Irving Edition (Scribner) will be found a con- 
venience in " cutting " plays for school presentation, portions 
unnecessary to the action being indicated. The Variorum 
Edition (Lippincott), by H. H. Furness (twelve plays now 
published), is a monument to American scholarship in this 
field. All material of importance has here been collected, 
and all the variations of text are noted. 

Abbott's Shakespearian Grammar (Macmillan), Schmidt's 
Shakespeare Lexicon, and Mrs. C. C. Clarke's Concordance 
to Shakespeare are standard books of reference. 

The Life of William Shakespeare, by Sidney Lee (Mac- 
millan, 1899), is the best biography of the dramatist. The 
Outlines for a Life of Shakespeare, by J. 0. Halliwell-Phil- 
lipps, is valuable for reference ; it contains amass of informa- 
tion, carefully gleaned, connected directly or indirectly with 
its subject. Biography and criticism are mingled in many 
books. Among the most useful are Hudson's Life, Art, and 
Characters of Shakespeare (Ginn), Shakespeare, His Mind 
and Art, by Edward Dowden (Harper's), and a most service- 
able Shakespeare Primer, by the same author. Gervinus 



168 FROM CHAUCER TO SHAKESPEARE 



and Ulrici are the most important German commentators on 
Shakespeare, and their criticism is often valuable. Five 
Lectures on Shakespeare, by B. ten Brink (Holt), contains 
much that is suggestive. Of the French critics, Taine and 
Victor Hugo may be referred to. G. Brandes, the Danish 
scholar, has produced A Critical Study of the poet. Mrs. 
Jameson's Characteristics of Women is excellent in the in- 
terpretation of Shakespeare's heroines. For the technical 
study of the dramas, R. G. Moulton's Shakespeare as a Dra- 
matic Artist (Clarendon Press) is very helpful. In this field, 
Freytag's Technique of the Drama, and the compact volume 
on The Drdma by Elizabeth Woodbridge (AUyn & Bacon), 
are also excellent. 

Rolfe's Shakespeare, the Boy (American Book Co.) is an 
interesting sketch of the manners and condition of the times. 

William Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man, by H. 
W. Mabie (Macmillan, 1900), contains beautiful and valu- 
able illustrations, which throw considerable light upon the 
age and its ways. 



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CHAPTER IV 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 

I. The Last of the Elizabethans : Francis Bacon. 
II. The Puritan Movement : John Milton. 

III. Seventeenth Century Lyrics. 

IV. The Restoration : John Bunyan, John Dryden. 

I. THE LAST OF THE ELIZABETHANS : BACON. 

It has, perhaps, been noted that the term Eliza- 
hethan^ as used to designate an epoch in the history of 
our literature, is allowed to include much more than the 
reign of that remarkable queen. It was in the thir- 
teenth year of King James that Shakespeare died, and 
Jonson lived until the twelfth of Charles I. Lesser 
contemporary dramatists, poets, and prose writers — 
many of whom cannot be mentioned in this work — are 
still described as Elizabethans. Even Milton is some- 
times included in the group, although removed by more 
than a generation from the period in which most of 
these men flourished : but the likeness in tone, the qual- 
ity of the verse, and the sweep of a great imagination 
— these characteristics are the distinctive marks of an 
Elizabethan writer ; not the precise limits of a definite 
area of time. 

Next to the dramas of Shakespeare, the prose works 
Francis of Francis Bacon are regarded as contributing 
Jgg°"* most to the glory of English literature in the 
1626. age of Elizabeth and James. Bacon repre- 
sents the intellectual type of that age ; dispassionate in 



EAKLY LIFE 



171 



judgment, coldly impartial even in his friendships, he 
practically applied his talents to gathering up all the 
fruits of scholarship, and in a tone itself resonant of 
his time, declared in a letter to Lord Burghley that he 
had taken all knowledge to be his province. 

This son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the 
Great Seal of England, was born at York E^riy 
House in the Strand, London, January 22, 
1561. His mother was a zealous Calvinist, strict and 
stern. The boy was precocious, and bore himself with 
such an air of gravity that Elizabeth, visiting his father, 
called him her little Lord Keeper. At twelve years 
of age Francis Bacon entered Trinity College, at Cam- 
bridge, remaining at the University till the end of 1575. 
In the year following he began to study law at Gray's 
Inn. Admitted to the bar in 1582, he entered Parlia- 
ment in 1584, representing the district of Melcombe, 
later sitting for Middlesex. During this period of his 
life Bacon was following the unpleasant and rarely 
profitable career of a suitor for royal patronage. His 
progress was slow. The famous Burghley, Elizabeth's 
prime minister, was his uncle ; but from his hand the 
young solicitor received no favor. Robert Devereux, 
Earl of Essex, the generous patron of Edmund Spen- 
ser, one of the most admired and also one of the most 
irresponsible of courtiers, was now the special favorite 
of the queen : to him Bacon turned for assistance. 
With the aid of Essex, he tried to secure an appoint- 
ment to the office of Solicitor-General in 1593, and 
was disappointed ; but the liberality of his patron was 
shown in a gift of the beautiful estate of Twickenham 
Park, whither Bacon retired for a while to rest and 
study. In 1597 appeared the first edition of the JEs- 
says, ten in number. 

The relations between Bacon and Essex furnish one 



172 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



of the problems in an analysis of Bacon's character, 
The Earl while the results which developed out of 
of Essex. those relations have much to do with the 
shadow which rests on this great author's faifie. The 
Earl was six years younger than the man whom he had 
befriended, impulsive and headstrong as he was bril- 
liant. In all honesty Francis Bacon seems to have done 
his best to tone down and to rectify the careless temper 
of his patron, and in vain. Essex, in spite of Eliza- 
beth's indulgent kindness, at last became so involved 
in his folly that he fell liable to charges of treason, 
and in 1601 was brought to trial. In the process of 
the case Bacon appeared — unwillingly, as he declared 
— and as Queen's Counsel presented the argument 
against the Earl with such precision that only one 
event became possible : Essex was beheaded. Bacon 
accepted X1200 from the fines imposed on Essex's 
estate, and justified his conduct in the affair by a 
published defense in which he asserts that the mainte- 
nance of the State is superior to the ties of friendship. 

In 1607 Bacon's ability finally received suitable ro- 
under cognition ; he was made Solicitor-General. 
James I. 1613 he became Attorney-General; four 

years later he was appointed Lord Keeper of the Seal, 
and in 1618 rose to his highest office as Chancellor of 
England. He received the title of Baron Verulam, 
and afterward was made Viscount of St. Albans. For 
three years Francis Bacon enjoyed all the privileges 
and honors of his high position. His manner of liv- 
ing was that of a prince ; his magnificence became 
proverbial. At the same time his devotion to study 
had never been forgotten ; his philosophical work, the 
Novum Organum^ or The New Method^ appeared in 
1620, and Bacon was recognized as the foremost scholar 
of his time. At the beginning of 1621 he was at the 



BACON'S FALL 



173 



summit of Lis prosperity, and then came one of the 
most notable reverses of fortune which ever overtook a 
man of fame. 

The career of the Chancellor had been a brilliant 
one. A long accumulation of untried suits had been 
disposed of, and there seem to have been no Bacon's 
complaints of injustice against the court. But 
Bacon had powerful enemies nevertheless, and at their 
instigation charges were sent to the Lords, by the 
House of Commons, affirming that the Chancellor was 
taking bribes. This was in March. Committees were 
appointed to investigate. Witnesses declared that 
bribes had been accepted, specifying sums of £300, 
£400, and £1000. Bacon fell ill ; he offered no de- 
fense. " My Lords," he said to those who had been 
sent to ask if his written confession was to stand, " it 
is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your Lord- 
ships be merciful to a broken reed." Bacon's punish- 
ment was announced in April. It was ordered that 
he be fined £40,000, be imprisoned during the sov- 
ereign's pleasure, and be banished forever from both 
Parliament and court. The fine was remitted, and 
Bacon was released from the Tower in June. He was 
fully pardoned by the king in September, but never 
participated again in public affairs. 

The disgrace of Lord Bacon was the fruit rather of 
a bad system than of deliberate crime. The bribes 
were always referred to as " presents," and it had been 
long the custom for high officials to accept gifts from 
those who had causes before them. It has never been 
shown that Bacon's decisions were influenced by these 
means. The pathetic side of the affair is most impres- 
sive. " All rising to great place is by a winding stair," 
said Francis Bacon, the philosopher, in his essay Of 
Great Place ; " the standing is slippery and the re- 



174 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



gress is either a downfall or, at least, an eclipse, which 
is a melancholy thing." And when writing Of Wis- 
dom for a Maris Self, he had said : " They \_sui 
amantes~\ become in the end themselves sacrifices to 
the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought 
by their self-wisdom to have pinioned." In his fall 
Bacon remained preeminently the philosopher. He 
appears to have had no thought of evil in the accept- 
ance of the presents ; yet when the charges had been 
formulated, he accepted their conclusions without a 
protest. Very significant of the temper of the man is 
his remarkable declaration : " I was the justest judge 
that was in England these fifty years ; but it was the 
justest censure in Parliament that was these two hun- 
dred years." 

The rest of Bacon's life passed in retirement and study 
The with his family at Gorhambury, near St. Al- 

ciosing bans. He enlarged the number of his Essays^ 
compiled a History of King Henry VIZ, 
wrote a philosophical romance somewhat on the lines of 
Utopia, entitled The New Atlantis, and further elabo- 
rated his system of philosophic study. He finally came 
to his death as a result of his devotion to science. 
Desiring to test the usefulness of snow as a preserva- 
tive of flesh, he caught a severe cold in the process of 
the experiment, a fever followed, and on April 9, 1626, 
Francis Bacon died. He was buried at St. Albans. 

Bacon's fame as a scholar is associated with his advo- 
Thein- cacy of the inductive method in scientific 
PMioso- study. The system of Aristotle, called the 
phy. deductive system, which by speculation enun- 

ciated certain principles, in accordance with which cer- 
tain facts were supposed to harmonize, had been the 
common method of the schoolmen. To this method of 
study Bacon was opposed, and had left the University 



NOVUM ORGANUM 



175 



with some contempt for the older system of thought. 
In his philosophical work he taught the necessity of 
beginning with facts, experimenting until the scholar 
should be certain of his data, and then proceeding to 
reason out the principles "and ideas which they em- 
bodied. Bacon was by no means an inventor of the 
inductive system, but through his insistence upon this 
method of study he did contribute greatly to all sub- 
sequent advance in science. He called men to study 
nature directly, and demonstrated the value of experi- 
ment. In the application of his own theories he 
achieved little of importance. Although he described 
heat as a mode of motion, and was familiar with some 
of the principles of light transmission, he seems not to 
have been acquainted with Harvey's discovery of the 
circulation of the blood, and he rejected the theories 
of Copernicus. 

Upon the Novum Organum Bacon concentrated all 
his thought. The work was written in Latin, ifovum 
because that was the language of scholars — Organum. 
" the universal language," as it was called ; and Bacon 
-shared in the opinion of his age that anything to en- 
dure must needs be put in the Latin tongue. In 1605 
he had written an essay upon The Advancemejit of 
Learning ; this was afterward elaborated in Latin 
under the title De Augmentis Scientiarum^ and serves 
as the general introduction to Bacon's great treatise 
which was to be called the Instauratio Magna Scien- 
tiarum^ of which the Novum Organum forms the sec- 
ond and most valuable part. The conclusion of this 
work, in which the author planned to formulate his 
philosophy, was never reached. 

Bacon's Essays should be studied by every intelligent 
reader. The form and style are unique ; but these qualities 



176 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



are subordinate to the pungent truth and gathered store 
Sugges- wisdom that they contain. The term essay was 

tionsfor borrowed, probably, from Montaigne, who in 
Study. 1580 pubhshed his Essais. In his De Aug- 
mentis Scientiarum Bacon speaks thus : " I would have 
all topics which there is frequent occasion to handle . . . 
studied and prepared beforehand; and not only so, but 
the case exaggerated both ways with the utmost force of 
the wit, and urged unfairly as it were and quite beyond 
the truth. And the best way of making such a collection, 
with a view to use as well as to brevity, would be to con- 
trast these commonplaces into certain acute and concise 
sentences ; to be as skeins, or bottoms, of thread which may 
be unwinded at large when they are wanted. ... A few 
instances of the thing, having a great many by me, I think 
fit to propound by way of example. I call them Antitheses 
of Things." The first edition of the Essays appeared in 
1597 ; there were ten of them. In the dedication to his 
brother Bacon calls them " the new half - pence, which 
though the silver were good, the pieces were small." A 
second edition appeared in 1612 and the number had been 
increased to forty. The final edition, published in 1625, 
included fifty-eight. In his dedication to Buckingham the 
author expresses his hope that " the Latin volume of them 
(being in the universal language) may last as long as books 
last." 

For special study let the student take the twelve essays 
upon Truth, Revenge, Adversity, Envy, Love, Great Place, 
Travel, Wisdom for a Man's Self, Friendship, Discourse, 
Gardens, Studies. See if any regular plan of arrangement 
can be found ; note the method of introduction, then consider 
the " unwinding." Outline some of these essays according 
to the topics discussed. What is the form of conclusion? 
Notice the vocabulary used : are there many obsolete terms, 
scientific terms, foreign terms ? Describe the sentences : 
are they short rather than long ? Count the words in the 
briefest sentences, those in the longest ; compare the aver- 
age sentence with that of some earlier writer. How does 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



177 



Bacon construct his sentences ? are they loose or periodic ? 
are there many balanced sentences ? How are the para- 
graphs made up ? What figures of speech appear most 
frequently ? Examine the illustrations. Do you find the 
expression clear ? Describe in your own words the quality 
of Bacon's style. 

What can you say of the thought ? Wherein do you find 
reflections that bear on the author's own experience ? Study 
particularly such brief passages as these : — 

" Virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they 
are incensed or crushed : for prosperity doth best discover 
vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue." — Adversity. 

" A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of 
pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no 
love." — Friendship. 

" A man that hath no virtue in himself ever envieth vir- 
tue in others." — Envy. 

" Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to them- 
selves." — Great Place. 

" It is a poor centre of a man's actions, — himself." — 
Wisdom for a Man's Self. 

Consider passages from Bacon's remarks concerning his 
own purposes and ideals, like the following (translated by 
Spedding from the Latin proem to a treatise on The Inter- 
pretation of Nature) : — 

" Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, 
and regarding the <;are of the Commonwealth as a kind of 
common property which, like the air and water, belongs to 
everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind 
might be best served, and what service I was myself best 
fitted to perform." 

In the light of your reading how would you interpret the 
character of Francis Bacon ? What seems to have been his 
estimate of human nature, — his integrity, — his wisdom ? 

The authority upon Bacon's life and the editor of his 
works is James Spedding ; the complete edition of Bacon's 
Works, edited by Spedding, Ellis, and Heath, is pubhshed 
by Houghton, Mifflin and Company ; also a popular edition 



178 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



in two volumes, based upon the former. The biography of 
Bacon by R. W. Church, in English Men of Letters Series, 
is brief and serviceable. Macaulay's Essay on Bacon is a 
classic, but not a satisfactory study of its subject. Minto's 
Manual of English Prose (Ginn) contains much helpful 
material upon Bacon's composition. 

Fairly reflecting the spirit of the Elizabethan age 
Minor Prose the prose works of Robert Burton (1577- 
writers. 1640) and of Sir Thomas Browne (1605- 
82), although the lives of these two men extend ob- 
viously beyond the natural limits of the age. Burton's 
curious volume — a classic in its kind — entitled The 
Anatomy of Melancholy^ was inspired, doubtless, by 
the works of Francis Bacon. It is a singular collection 
of the lore of melancholy: discursive, amusing, quasi- 
scientific in character, learned and gossipy by turns. 
It appeared in 1621. Of more dignified tone and 
richer in its style is the Religio Medici, or The Reli- 
gion of a Physician, by Sir Thomas Browne, pub- 
lished in 1643. The author, a graduate of Oxford, 
who had traveled widely and had taken his degree in 
medicine at Leyden, was a man of distinguished learn- 
ing and rare wisdom. His admirable book he intended 
for his own " private exercise ; " " the intention was not 
publick." It is really a confession of faith, and re- 
veals a mind fond of the mystical side of the spiritual 
life, tolerant of others' views ; the style of the work is 
stately and of great beauty. Of Browne's later essays 
that upon Urn Burial, or a Discourse of the Sepul- 
chral Urns lately Found in Norfolk (1658) is best 
known. It is full of curious learning, set forth in prose 
of elaborate and majestic eloquence. Both works be- 
long among our prose classics. 



KISE OF PURITAXISM 



179 



II. THE PURITAN MOVEMENT : MILTON. 

When Shakespeare died in April, 1616, John Mil- 
ton was a boy seven and a half years old. By chance 
his parents lived in a house on Bread Street, the thor- 
oughfare on which stood the Mermaid Tavern, head- 
quarters for the group of dramatists and poets of whom 
Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were illustrious members. 
Tradition has it that Shakespeare was present with his 
friends at a merrymaking in this historic tavern as late 
as 1614 ; and fancy has pictured a possible contact of 
these two spirits, Shakespeare and Milton, — one near 
the close of his career ; the other, as yet unfledged, but 
destined to occupy a place in English letters second 
only to that held by his great predecessor. However, 
this is only fancy, and while the lives of Shakespeare 
and Milton thus overlap, the age of Milton's maturity 
was as separate and distinct from that of the drama- 
tists as though a century lay between. In the boyhood 
of Milton the later Elizabethans were still alive ; but 
his age was the age of Charles L, of Cromwell, and of 
Charles XL The climax of his generation was the 
development of Puritan England; its decadence was 
the Restoration. 

"No greater moral change ever passed over a na- 
tion," says Green, " than passed over Eng- Rise of 
land during the years which parted the mid- Piiritanism. 
die of the reisrn of Elizabeth from the meetino^ of the 
Long Parliament (1583-1640). England became the 
people of a book, and that book was the Bible." ^ For 
the mass of the people there was no other literature, 
and when Bibles were ordered to be set up in churches, 
and public readers were employed, the people flocked 
to listen. The effect of this new familiarity with the 
Scriptures was speedily seen, not only in the language 

^ Short History of the English People, ch, viii. § 1. 



180 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



of the nation, but in its character as well. Theology- 
became the passion of the thoughtful, and the pro- 
found problems of religion occupied the minds both of 
scholars and common men. In this atmosphere the 
Puritan was born. He might be a gentleman by birth 
and breeding ; on the other hand, he might be of the 
laboring class, uncultured and uncouth. In either case 
he was distinguished by his sobriety and strictness of 
life, his gravity of demeanor, his self-control, his demo- 
cratic spirit, his opposition to all that smacked of 
license, of extravagance, of immorality, and by his 
recognition of the brotherhood of faith and practice. 
The strength of the Puritan movement found itself in 
the middle and professional classes. John Milton ex- 
hibited the characteristics of Puritanism in its highest 
and most attractive type. 

The Puritan movement was not merely a develop- 
Poiitics 1^6^^ intellectual and spiritual life of 

the nation ; it was a political evolution as 
well. The accession of the Stuarts was accompanied 
by an unhappy emphasis on the doctrine of the divine 
right of kingship and an unpleasant stress on the 
authority of the state church ; conformity was enjoined 
upon all. Yet the Nonconformists, the Independents, 
multiplied in spite of legal enactment and ecclesiastical 
tyranny. Incidental to these disturbances was the rise 
of a band of Separatists in Lincolnshire, whose teach- 
ings and polity were at variance with those of the 
Puritans, although in spirit and aim they were at one 
with the latter. For security and freedom these people 
fled to Holland, and in 1620 once more embarked to 
establish a permanent home in the new world. They 
were the Pilgrims, who landed from the Mayflower at 
Plymouth Eock when John Milton was a lad of 
twelve. 



THE COMMONWEALTH 



181 



I oUowing the dissolution of Parliament by Charles I. 
in 1629 there was no meeting of either The 
house for eleven years. The king governed Covenant, 
single-handed, and all abuses increased. In Scotland 
there was great excitement. At Edinburgh, in 1638, 
the old Covenant, which had been drawn in the time 
of Mary, was again brought forth, and in the church- 
yard of Grey Friars was signed amid intense enthu- 
siasm by those who swore 

" by the great nattie of the Lord our God, to continue in the 
profession and obedience of the said religion, and that we 
shall defend the same, and resist all their contrary errors 
and corruptions, according to our own vocation and the 
utmost of that power which God has put into our hands all 
the days of our life." ^ 

Hence came the name of the Covenanters. In 1643 
this oath was subscribed to by the Commons. 

In 1642 civil war began. Among the leaders of the 
Parliamentary forces Oliver Cromwell be- 
came more and more prominent. Within two 
years the Royalists were beaten, and Charles was nom- 
inally a prisoner of his own Parliament. Events were 
pushed to a crisis, and at the end of 1648 a remnant 
of the Commons, the famous Rump Parliament, con- 
demned Charles to death " as a tyrant, traitor, mur- 
derer, and enemy to his country." In January, 1649, 
he was beheaded at Whitehall. 

From 1649 to 1653 England was in name a repub- 
lic. In 1653 Oliver Cromwell became the TheCom- 
Protector ; and upon his death five years monweaith. 
afterward, the title descended to his son Richard, who 
maintained it weakly for two years. The fall of Puri- 
tanism in England was indicated by the return of the 
Stuarts in 1660, the accession of Charles II., and the 

1 Green, ch. Yiii. § 5. 



182 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



beginning of the period o£ the Restoration. During 
this turbulent epoch of civil commotion John Milton 
played no inconspicuous part. He was officially em- 
ployed in the government of the Commonwealth. In 
his writings we find the clear expression of the Puritan 
spirit. 

The English poet who, by common consent, holds a 
John I'auk second only to that of Shakespeare, was 
Milton, born in London December 9, 1608. Milton's 
1608-74. grandfather was a Catholic. His father, also 
John Milton, was a Protestant, and had been disin- 
herited for his faith. By profession the poet's father 
was a scrivener ; that is, he was an attorney and also a 
stationer. He was a man of property and of culture, 
appreciative of the value of learning and especially 
devoted to music. He composed several tunes, of 
which York and Norwich are still standard in the 
hymn books of to-day. He designed that his son should 
enter the Church, and planned with great care and lib- 
erality for his education. 

Milton's training began at ten years of age under the 
direction of a private tutor in the person of 
a Puritan minister, a Scotchman, Thomas 
Young. He attended St. Paul's School in London, 
and in 1625, then in his seventeenth year, entered the 
University of Cambridge and was enrolled a student 
of Christ's College. Here Milton remained until J uly, 
1632, when, at the age of twenty-three, he received the 
master's degree. 

Of Milton's student life we have a few interesting 
At Cam- details. We know that it was his practice to 
bridge. gjt till midnight with his book, and that this 
close application to his studies was the first occasion 
of that trouble which resulted later in his blindness. 
We are told that he performed the academical exercises 



AT HORTON 



183 



to the admiration of all, and was esteemed a virtuous 
and sober person, yet not ignorant of his own parts. 
A picturesque and an attractive figure is this youth 
just coming of age — not precisely the type which the 
Puritan character is apt to suggest — a fair complex- 
ion, delicate features, dark gray eyes, and auburn hair 
falling upon his shoulders. The fairness of his oval 
face seemed feminine in its delicacy, and he was some- 
times called "the lady of Christ's." His figure, if 
slight, was erect, and his gait was manly. Like all 
gentlemen he used the sword with skill, and thought 
himself a match for any one. 

The young poet had composed English and Latin 
verses at an early age. His first English poem of any 
note belongs to the year 1626, and commemorates the 
death of an infant, his sister's child. In 1629 he pro- 
duced the well-known Ode on the Morning of Christ's 
Nativity. " It is a gift," he says, I have presented 
to Christ's natal-day. On that very morning at day- 
break it was first conceived." Various odes of less im- 
portance followed, together with much minor verse. 
The Ejntaph on Shakespeare was Milton's first pub- 
lished poem ; it found a place among the tributes in- 
cluded in the folio edition of the plays, published in 
1632. The sonnet, On His Being Arrived at the Age 
of Twenty-three^ is a fine expression of the serious 
mind of this young Puritan who will use his ripening 
manhood as ever in his great taskmaster's eye. 

Following the period of residence at Cambridge 
Milton went to live at his father's house in 
Horton, seventeen miles from London, near 
Windsor and Eton. In this quiet environment he 
passed the next six years of his life, making occasional 
visits to London, devoting his time to study, and find- 
ing delightful recreation in music and mathematics. 



184 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



Here at Horton he wrote the group of five composi- 
tions which we call his minor poems, — not because of 
any inferiority in them, but because of the surpassing 
greatness of his later work. Indeed, had John Milton 
never written Paradise Lost^ the author of Li' Allegro^ 
II Penseroso^ Comus, and Lycidas would have been 
reckoned among the great poets of our literature. 
These poems reflect the varying moods of Milton's mind. 
L' Allegro and II Penseroso^ companion pictures of 
the man in joyous, lively mood, and again serious, con- 
templative, solitary, appropriately precede the masque 
Comus^ presented at Ludlow Castle (1634), in which 
the poet breaks forth in vigorous denunciation of the 
violence and license of the time. In Arcades, a lighter 
composition of the same period, there are no allusions 
of a political character; but in lycidas (1637), the 
exquisite elegy inspired by the death of his friend 
Edward King, the poet voices an indignant rebuke 
against the abuses of clerical scandals, and comments 
unsparingly upon the evils of his age. 

During 1638-39 Milton made the European tour. 
Continental He visited Paris, and saw the eminent Dutch 
Travel. scholar Grotius. He then traveled through 
Italy, visiting Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, Florence, and 
Kome. At Florence he remained two months, and while 
there went to see Galileo, who was in prison, and 
blind. This courtly, handsome, cultured Englishman 
was well received in the society of these Italian towns. 
At Rome he was graciously entertained for three 
months, and verses were written in his praise. Then 
came sudden news of a rising in Scotland. Milton 
knew its significance and the Puritan conscience spoke : 
" The sad news of civil war coming from England 
called me back ; for I thought it disgraceful, while my 
fellow countrymen were fighting for liberty, that I 



MILTON'S PROSE WORKS 



185 



should be traveling abroad for pleasure."^ But the 
crisis had not yet come, and the poet did not hasten 
his return. This first outbreak had subsided when he 
again arrived in London in July, 1639. Concerning 
his foreign visit and his own personal conduct in a 
period of general license, Milton afterward declared : 
" I again take God to witness that in all those places 
where so many things are considered lawful, I lived 
sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice, 
having this thought perpetually before me, that though 
I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not 
the eyes of God." ^ 

The household at Horton was now broken up, and 
Milton took lodgings in London, where for a 
time he directed the education of his two 
nephews and the sons of other friends. 

He was already pondering plans for some great po- 
etical work, undoubtedly stimulated in this ambition 
by his intercourse with the writers of Italy and his 
recent acquaintance with their works. The subject of 
King Arthur had already suggested itself ; and there 
are among the poet's papers of this date, lists of sub- 
jects, more than a hundred in all, some taken from 
British history, some from the Bible ; there are also 
drafts of a sacred drama on the theme of Paradise 
Lost. 

A well-defined period in Milton's life is that included 
by the years 1640-60. This was the period j^^^jj^.g 
of civil agitation and national turmoil attend- Prose 
ing the struggle between the two hostile par- 
ties, the trial of Charles, his execution in 1649, the 
establishment of the Commonwealth, and the downfall 
of the second Protectorate. Into the controversy of 
that troubled age the poet of puritanism flung himself 

^ Defensio Secunda. 



186 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



wholly. In his Second Defense he declares : " I re- 
solved, though I was then meditating other matters, to 
transfer into this struggle all my genius and all the 
strength of my industry." 

To this period of Milton's life belong the prose 
works : the pamphlets, tractates, and defenses which 
make up his contributions to political and controversial 
literature. These prose writings comprise : — 

I. A group of five pamphlets against episcopacy 
(1641-42). 

II. Four papers on divorce (1643-45). 

III. The Tractate on Education (1644). 

lY. Areopagitica^ — a plea for unlicensed printing 
(1644). 

V. Many pamphlets upon civil affairs, including 
Eikonoklastes (1649), the Pro Populo Anglicano 
Defensio (1651), and the Defensio Secunda (1654). 

Milton's controversial writings are marred by the 
abusive attacks which always characterized controversy 
in that day, but one or two of these papers stand far 
above the rest. The Areopagitica, particularly, is 
an eloquent and beautiful work. The areopagus was 
the forum of Athens, the court of public appeal, the 
Mars Hill of Paul's address ; hence the significance of 
the title. Previous to publication all manuscripts were 
submitted to an official censor who might give or refuse 
license for their printing. The law had a demoralizing 
effect on the production of books ; in the beginning 
of 1643 only thirty-five publications were registered. 
Milton's argument for the freedom of the press was a 
splendid defense of books, yet no results followed his 
brilliant appeal. 

In March, 1649, two months after the execution 
of Charles I., Milton was appointed Latin Secretary 
to the committee of foreign affairs under the Com- 



THE RESTORATION 



187 



monwealtli. In that year appeared a work put forth 
by Royalists, entitled Eikon Basilike^ or The Latin 
Royal Image^ purporting to be the work of Secretary, 
the king in his last days, and giving a most favorable 
picture of his religious fervor. Milton wrote a reply, 
Mikonoklastes^ or The Image Breaker. While the 
duties of the secretary were primarily connected with 
the official correspondence of the Government, which 
was conducted in Latin, he was employed in these po- 
litical controversies for many 3^ears. In 1651 he was 
warned by physicians that his sight, which had long 
been failing, would be utterly destroyed if he persisted 
in his arduous work ; still he kept on at his task, and 
in the following year became entirely blind. Even 
then he retained his office and attended to its duties. 

The accession of Charles II. was the signal for a 
period of gross license and excess. It seemed ^he 
as if all the graceless spirits of evil, which had Restoration, 
been so rigorously repressed under the somewhat grim 
rule of the Puritans, had broken bounds and were free 
of any semblance of restraint. England swung from 
one extreme to the other, and the pleasures of the court 
were sought in ribaldry and vice. The last period of 
Milton's life was passed in the depression incident to 
such an age. When the Royalist party was again in 
power, prominent Independents were at once pro- 
scribed ; and the former Latin Secretary had been too 
staunch a supporter of Cromwell and the Common- 
wealth to escape. For some months he was forced into 
hiding, remaining under protection of friends. The 
Eikonoklastes and the two Defenses of the English 
people were burned by the common hangman. From 
August to December, Milton was in actual custody, but 
was then freed. He was very poor. In 1666 his house 
was burned in the great fire which ravaged London in 



188 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



that year. The poet had been twice married. His first 
wife, Mary Powell, left three daughters, who are re- 
ported to have been rather undutiful and careless of 
his comfort. The second wife, Catherine Woodcock, 
whose marriage with the poet took place in 1656, lived 
but little more than a year. In 1663 Milton married 
again, and this third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, survived 
him. 

During the years 1658-65 the poet was engaged 
Paradise upon his great poem. Paradise Lost. When 
Lost. published two years later, it failed of the 
recognition due to so remarkable a work, although the 
fact is not surprising when we recall the character of 
the time and the conditions under which Milton's poem 
first saw the light. 

Paradise Lost is our great English epic. The scope 
of its plan is the most ambitious that a poet could con- 
ceive ; and yet with a superb consciousness of power 
correspondent to his task, Milton invokes the Heavenly 
Muse to aid his adventurous song 

" That -with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount, -while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." 

His lofty purpose is to 

" assert eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men." 

It seems as if the poet at times felt that he was di- 
rectly inspired in the execution of his task. He relied, 
as he declares, " on devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit 
who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge and 
sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his 
altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." 
Elsewhere he refers to 




PARADISE 

LOST, 



BOOK h 



F Mans Firft Difobedience j and 

the Fruit i 

Of that Forbidden Tree, whofc t 

mortal taft I 

Brought Death into the World ^ | 

and all our woe, . | 

With loG of £^ie?f, till one greater Man | 

Rcftore us, and reg.iin the blifsful $eat5 ; j 

SiBg Heav'rily Mufc, that on the fecret top '. \ 

Of Oreb^ or of sh/jt^ didft infpire i i 

That ShepherdjWho firft taught the chofen Seed, I \ 

hi the Beginning how the Henv and Earth J 
Rofe out of Chaoe : Or. if Sh^ Hill ' re I 

Dv'light thee more, and Brook that flow'djj | 

F.4r by the Oracle of God s I thence - ; ( 

invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song,' ,:.,•) ' 

That with no middle flight intends to foar , • ^ 

A ^ • Above I 




FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF MILTON'S POEM 
(Reproduced from an original copy of the first edition (1GG7) in the Boston Public 
Library. ) 



190 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



"my celestial patroness, who deigns 
Her nightly visitation unimplor'd, 
And dictates to me slumb'ring, or inspires 
Easy ray unpremeditated verse." ^ 

The great Puritan was indeed filled with the spirit 
of his faith, and his mind was stored with unusual 
treasures of knowledge from which he drew, almost 
unconscious of their wealth. His style, always dignified 
and stately, even in the minor poems, now rose to loftier 
heights. His great creation is the character of Satan. 
The most impressive portions of the poem are found in 
the first two books. Especially effective in the de- 
scriptive passages are the phrasings by which the poet 
suggests the vagueness and vastness of his scenes. 

" Who shall tempt with wand'ring feet 
The dark unbottom''d infinite abyss, 
And through the palpable obscure find out 
His uncouth way, or spread his very flight, 
Upborne with indefatigable wings 
Over the vast abrupt. . . ." ^ 

Following the order of its plan, the epic proceeds 
with the account of the fallen angels, their infernal 
council, and Satan's journey to the new-created earth. 
The first pair are described in Eden. Raphael, the 
archangel, is sent and instructs them concerning the 
revolt of Satan and his hosts ; he recounts the story of 
creation, and finally departs. The narrative of man's 
fall then follows, and the expulsion of the pair from 
Paradise. As has been stated, Milton's success is great- 
est in the earlier part of his work ; the human char- 
acters are far less impressive than those that move amid 
the awful gloom of the earlier scenes. When the poet 
enters celestial regions and attempts to present Deity 
itself, he has passed the bounds of human ability, and 

1 Book IX. 11. 21-24. 
■2 Book II. 11. 404-408. 



LAST POEMS 



191 



fixed the limits of his own dramatic success. But there 
is no other poem like Paradise Lost. Its sublimity of 
vision, its height of imaginative creation, its solemn 
grandeur of great harmonies, have never been equaled 
in English verse. 

Paradise Pegained was written in 1666 in response 
to a suggestion that the poet should present this Last 
side of man's religious experience ; and the Poems, 
latter poem stands as a pendant to the earlier. In the 
story of the temptation of our Lord the poet finds the 
material of a new epic, and now sings : — 

" Recover'd Paradise to all mankind, 
By one man's firm obedience fully try'd 
Through all temptation, and the tempter foil'd 
In all his wiles, defeated, and repuls'd. 
And Eden rais'd in the waste w^ilderness." 

The last important Q,om^o?>\t\on^ Samson A gonistes^ 
appeared in 1671. This picture of the struggling 
champion of Israel, beset and afflicted by mocking 
enemies, gains a new significance when we remember 
Milton's blindness and the political environment of his 
closing years. The poem of Samson is cast on the lines 
of the ancient Greek drama and is characterized by 
classic stateliness and austerity of style. 

Milton was not left lonely in his last years. Friends 
attended him, and foreigners in England sought him 
out. One writer ^ of the time declares that *' he was 
visited by the learned much more than he did desire." 
One who saw him thus describes the poet as sitting in 
an elbow-chair in his chamber, dressed neatly in black ; 
pale, but not cadaverous ; his hands and fingers gouty, 
and with chalk-stones. He used also to sit at the door 
of his house in Bunhill Fields, wrapped in a gray 
coarse cloth coat, to enjoy the fresh air ; and sometimes 

1 Aubrey. 



192 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



here, sometimes in his room, he received his guests. 
Milton died November 8, 1674, and was buried in the 
Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. 

L' Allegro and II Penseroso. These two exquisite 
Suggestions poems should be studied together. Each is the 
for Study, pendant of the other, and the parallelism is very- 
close. They are descriptive poems, — pictures of nature and 
of incident as they are seen by the poet under two varying 
moods. 

V Allegro is the man in lively mood ; II Penseroso, the 
man thoughtful, contemplative. Milton does not use the 
word " melancholy " precisely in the sense in which we now 
use that term. 

In the study of these poems first note the many ways in 
which the parallelism is perfected. Compare the invoca- 
tions of both poems, also their conclusions. What characters 
in II Pensei'oso correspond to Euphrosyne (line 12), Venus 
(line 14), Bacchus (line 16), Jest and Jollity (line 26), Sport 
(line 31), Laughter (line 32), Liberty (line 36) ? Now fol- 
low in their course respectively the incidents described : on 
the one hand those that mark the progress of the day, on 
the other those that attend the passing of the night. Com- 
pare these two pictures, the happy social scenes of country 
life, bright with sunshine, cheery with companionship, and 
blessed with contented toil, and the calm solitude of the 
night, bathed in the full moon's splendor, the peaceful quiet 
made more impressive by the mellow notes of the nightin- 
gale, the distant chiming of the curfew bell, or the drowsy 
calling of the hours by the watchman's muffled voice. Point 
out the correspondences in i' Allegro, lines 130-150, and 
II Penseroso, lines 97-120. It should be understood that 
in neither poem does the author follow strictly an immediate 
succession of incidents continuous and unbroken. For ex- 
ample, in the first poem it is now the song of the lark and 
the crowing of the cock by which he is awakened ; and then 
it is the sound of hounds and horn ; again the whistle of the 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



193 



ploughman and the milkmaid's song usher in the day. And 
so in the other poem if the even-song of Philomel be not 
forthcoming, the poet walks in the shadow and the moon- 
light, "or if the air will not permit," sits beside the glowing 
embers, or lights his lamp to pore over Plato or ^schylus, 
the Greek dramatists or Chaucer, as he feels inclined. And 
yet the passage of time is also clearly suggested. From 
your study of the poems can you say which mood is most 
honored of Milton or which is the more characteristic of 
him ? In a detailed study of these poems it will be neces- 
sary to understand the allusions, classical and otherwise. In 
i' Allegro what is the significance of introducing Cerberus 
(line 2) ? why Stygian (line 3) ? Cimmerian (line 10) ? In 
77 Penseroso why is Morpheus mentioned (line 10) ? Prince 
Memnon's sister (line 10) is Hemera ; the " starred Ethiope 
queen " is Cassiopeia ; the Sea Nymphs are the Nereids : 
a classical dictionary will explain the force of the allusion 
here. Proceed thus with later allusions in the poems. 

The metre of these two poems is simple. The first ten 
verses which form the introduction in each follow the rhyme 
order a — bb — a — c — dd — ee — e; afterward the verses 
rhyme in couplets. In the first ten lines, too, we have verses 
of three accents alternating with those of five ; subsequently 
the verses are all of four accents. The type form is as in 
verse 11 : — 

" But come, thou Goddess, fdir and fr^e." 

Milton varies the placing of the accent with an artist's skill 
that relieves the composition of all monotony. While it is 
right to read such poetry as this without thought of the 
mere mechanics of its structure, it is not right to pass over 
such consummate composition without some appreciation of 
its technique. Therefore notice the dropping of the first 
syllable of the normal verse in verse 13 : — 

" And by m^n heart-edsing- mirth." 

Find other illustrations of this arrangement. Notice another 
variation, — the use of double or feminine rhymes in lines 



194 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



45-46. Read aloud, emphasizing accent and pause, the pas- 
sage ini' Allegro beginning " Haste thee, nymph " (line 25), 
and as far as line 40 ; does there not seem to be a natural 
appropriateness of the metre to the sense ? In the same 
manner read the corresponding passage in II Penseroso (lines 
30-54). In L' Allegro (lines 45-46) the thought is not that 
the lark is to appear in the window, but that the poet, awak- 
ening at the summons of the songster, himself arises, throws 
off his melancholy, and greets the world, which is wide 
awake. Now take notice of the series of pictures descriptive 
of the rural pleasures. In how many phrases has the poet 
described the dawn ? Compare line 40 with Chaucer's pic- 
ture of the dawn in The Knighfs Tale (lines 633-638), 
*'The bisj larke," etc., and line 60 with Shakespeare in 
Romeo and Juliet, III. v. and Hamlet, I. i. 166. Think over 
the suggestiveness of the epithets used in such phrases as 
" dappled dawn " (line 44), " amber light " (line 61) , " rus- 
set lawns " (line 71), "nibbling flocks" (line 72), "labour- 
ing clouds" (line 74). Consider how effective are lines like 
116, 135-144. Notice the tribute to Jonson and Shakespeare. 
Just what does Milton mean in lines 132-134, and in II 
Penseroso, lines 155-174 ? What sort of a man does the 
poet portray in the moods of these two poems ? 

CoMUS. The masque Comus is perhaps the most perfect 
of Milton's poems. It belongs to a class of compositions 
popular in the age of Elizabeth and James, and developed 
with elaborate form by Ben Jonson. The masque was a 
dramatic performance which combined the effects of poetry, 
music, and dancing, and was closely related to the more 
modern opei*etta. Milton's Comus was written in collabora- 
tion with Henry Lawes, a distinguished musician, at whose 
suggestion the poet had written Arcades, a briefer and 
slighter composition, presented at Harefield in honor of 
the Countess of Derby in the previous year. Comus was 
presented at Ludlow Castle in 1634 before the Earl of 
Bridgewater. Lawes composed the music for the songs and 
dances, superintended the presentation, and acted the part 
of the Attendant Spirit in the masque. The spirit of Mil- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



195 



ton's work is pastoral; the allusions are mainly to classic 
mythology, and the poem takes on an allegorical significance 
— as was common in the masque. The character of Comus 
had been introduced in an earlier masque by Ben Jonson, 
and there had been published at Oxford in this same year a 
Latin prose work describing a dream in which Comus figures. 
The story of the lost sister, sought for by her two brothers, 
is found in a play called Old Wives^ Tale, by George Peele 
(1595). In Comus Milton uses for the most part the blank 
verse of ten syllables, with five accents, the ordinary metre 
of the drama. The theme of the masque is the grace of 
purity, the " sun-clad power of chastity " (line 782), which 
to the mind of the young Puritan was in as direful peril 
at the court of Charles as in the revel-haunted wood of 
Comus and his rout. Especially expressive of the Puritan 
ideal of virtue are the passages in which the Elder Brother 
speaks (lines 584-599), the splendid defiance in the Lady's 
speech (lines 756-799), and the closing words of the Spirit 
(lines 1018-1023). Compare the spirit of Comus with that 
of L' Allegro. Is there any contradiction in the sympathies 
expressed ? 

Lycidas. " In Lycidas,'' says Pattison, the biographer 
of Milton, " we have reached the high-water mark of Eng- 
lish poesy and of Milton's own production." This is extreme 
praise ; and yet it suggests that the poem is worthy of the 
most careful examination, and that in sentiment and form it 
should arouse some degree of genuine appreciation in every 
serious reader. What are some of the facts to be noted by 
a student of Lycidas ? 

First, it is an elegy, written in honor of Edward King, 
an old classmate of Milton at the University of Cambridge, 
where he had been in residence since June, 1626, first as 
undergraduate, then as fellow, and finally tutor. Li the sum- 
mer vacation of 1637 King made a trip by sea to Ireland 
and was drowned in the wreck of the vessel, which struck 
upon a rock not long after leaving the port. In the autumn 
a memorial volume was planned by the friends of Edward 
King, and for it Milton wrote his Lycidas in November of 



196 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



the same year, 1637. The book itself was not published 
until 1638, and Milton's elegy was placed at its close. There 
are three great elegies in English literature which form a 
famous group, surpassing in general interest and impressive 
character all others of the kind. These are (1) Milton's 
Lycidas (1637), in memory of King ; (2) Shelley's Adonais 
(1821), called forth by the death of Keats; and (3) Tenny- 
son's In Memoriam (1850), the loving personal tribute and 
record of personal experience which followed the death of 
his intimate friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. Of these three 
poems Milton's is the most artificial and is less suggestive of 
a deep personal grief than is In Memoriam. Shelley's poem 
was inspired by pity and indignation rather than by love, but 
there is in it more of the spontaneity of passion than in the 
Lycidas. And yet Milton's great composition is filled with 
beauties of its own that make its distinction secure. 

Secondly, Lycidas is a pastoral poem, employing the 
machinery of shepherds and utilizing the mythology of Rome. 
Since the appearance of Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar, 
pastoral motives had been the delight of Elizabethan writers 
and readers, not only in lyric poetry, but in dramatic verse, 
and even in romantic prose as well. Therefore it was only 
natural that Milton should figure forth his monody under 
the fiction of " the uncouth swain " who 

" touched the tender stop of various quills 
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay." 

Third, the spirit and the tone are strikingly in unison 
throughout. The introduction presents the shepherd, lament- 
ing his own immaturity perhaps, compelled by 
" Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear " 

to rudely break in on nature's course with a disturbing 
touch, to force a tribute because Lycidas is dead — dead ere 
his prime. There is, of course, in this suggestion of reluct- 
ance, an allusion to Milton's formulated resolve, after the 
completion of his masque of Comus (1634), not to resume 
the poet's voice until another epoch should dawn in his own 
career and in his country's history. But — 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 197 



" Hence with denial vain and coy excuse : " 

and thus the Sistfers of the Sacred Well are invoked by the 
poet and he proceeds with his gracious task. In keeping 
with the classic character of the poem are the proper names 
employed, which are familiar terms in the Latin Eclogues ; 
the mythological allusions should be identified. There are 
some inconsistencies, anachronisms, as the introduction of the 
Pilot of the Gahlean lake — St. Peter, of course — (line 109), 
and of Him who walked the waves (line 173) ; as well also 
the allusion to the dead shepherd's entertainment by " all the 
saints above" (line 178). The use of classic names to desig- 
nate English localities and institutions is justified by the 
nature of the pastoral. Examples are Mona (Anglesey), 
Deva (the Dee) (line 55), Camus (the genius of Cambridge, 
where the poet and his friend had studied) (line 103). 

Interesting is the allusion to contemporary literature con- 
tained in Jiiies 64-69 : — 
«^ 

" Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care 
To tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade, 
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse ? 
Were it not better done as others use, 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or with the tangles of Nesera's hair ? " 

In this passage Milton suggests the query whether it be 
better to follow the high ideal of purity, simplicity, and stern 
morality which was his poetical creed, or to join in the loose 
and pleasure-loving chorus of Cavalier song writers and 
amatory poets of Charles's court. 
In the passage beginning 

" Last came, and last did g-o, 
The Pilot of the Galilean lake " (lines 109-110), 

we catch a glimpse of the real passion of Milton's soul, almost 
his first formal attack on the abuses and errors of the spirit- 
ual leaders of his day. Edward King had been intended 
for the Church, and the poet mourns his untimely death as for 
one who would have made a good pastor, a true shepherd. 
In the person of Peter the indignant poet exclaims : — 



198 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



" How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ? 
Of other care they little reckoning- make 
Than how to scramble at the shearer's feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least 
That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! " 

The expression " blind mouths " is a famous one and has 
caused considerable criticism and comment. It seems to be 
decidedly a mixing of ideas, and when we try to follow the 
thought further, we are puzzled by the introduction of a new 
metaphor in the use of the sheep-hook, or shepherd's crook, 
and wonder how the combination of blind mouths holding a 
sheep-hook could be conceived. But of course this is intense 
concentration of thought and figure both ; Shakespeare allows 
himself such hcense again and again ; and here the poet's 
thought is clear enough, while it gains tremendous force from 
the mingling of the metaphors. Milton is speaking of the 
bishops and the pastors of the established state church. 
Now a bishop is a watchman, an over-seer, and a pastor is a 
shepherd, a feeder of the sheep. What, then, more striking 
figure can be imagined to express " the precisely accurate 
contraries of right character, in the two great offices of the 
Church — those of bishop and pastor " ? — as John Ruskin 
points out in his essay. Sesame and Lilies. Concerning the 
exact application of the reference to the two-handed engine 
in line 130, at least two different interpretations have been 
urged, and Milton's thought is uncertain. With line 132, 

" Return, Alpheus ; the dread voice is past, 
That shrunk thy streams," 

the poet resumes the purely pastoral strain and continues 
his simpler Doric lay. 

Milton employs some native Anglo-Saxon words that have 
in time become unusual if not obsolete, but like all such 
words they carry peculiar force when their meaning is rightly 
understood. Thus ivelter (line 13) means to roll, or wallow, 
to tumble about, and is particularly suggestive of the forlorn 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



199 



pitilessness of the tossing waves as they carelessly pitch and 
roll the body of the drowned. Scrannel (line 124) means 
pared or peeled, scraped till thin and poor ; loathe (line 142), 
early positive of rather ; uncouth (line 186), literally, not 
knowing, awkward. 

The authority on Milton is David Masson. Masson's Life 
of John Milton, narrated in connection with the Brief Bib- 
political, ecclesiastical and literary history of his liogiaphy. 
time (Macmillan) , is the source of all subsequent statement, 
and is one of the few great biographies in our literature. 
The life of Milton in English Men of Letters Series, by 
Mark Pattison, is brief, as is that by Garnett in the Great 
Writers Series. 

Interesting studies of Milton have been made by Addison 
in the Spectator, 267, Johnson in his Lives of the Poets, 
Macaulay in his essay on Milton, Lowell in Among my 
Books, Matthew Arnold in Essays in Criticism, 2d ser. 

In special criticism Stopf ord Brooke's Milton, in Classical 
Writers Series, is valuable. The notes upon the minor 
poems are elaborate in Hale's Longer English Poems. In 
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies there is a well-known and help- 
ful comment on Lycidas. A good edition of Paradise Lost 
is that edited by John A. Himes (Harpers), with introduc- 
tion and notes. Masson's Three Devils, Luther's, Milton's, 
Goethe's, and Other Essays is recommended. Taine's His- 
tory of English Literature contains some amusing, although 
not very profound, criticism upon Milton's epic. 

Macaulay 's chapter on " The Puritans " and Green's Short 
' History, ch. viii., should be read for information on the 
times. 

Milton's Complete Poetical Works are published in the 
Cambridge Edition (Houghton, Mifflin and Company). 

III. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRICS. 

Besides Milton there was no great poet in England 
during the period of civil discord attending the rise of 
Puritanism and the era of the Commonwealth ; and 



200 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 

yet there were not a few who laid claim to the title of 
" poet," and some whose contributions to English verse 
are far from unimportant. 

A peculiar phase of the poetical art is found in the 
TheMeta- compositions of a little group of versifiers 
physical who are frequently described as the meta- 
physical poets. First in point of time was 
John Donne, who appears to have been the leader of 
John school. Reared a Catholic, he later joined 

Donne, the Anglican Communion, and became a 
clergyman in 1615. In 1621 he was made 
Dean of St. Paul's. His early verse was amatory and 
passionate; his later productions were religious and 
devotional. His style was later described aptly by 
Dryden, who declared that Donne was " the greatest 
wit., though not the best poet of our nation." The 
word wit was here used, as generally at the close of the 
seventeenth century and the beginning of the eight- 
eenth, to denote a clever or ingenious writer rather 
than a humorous one, and was applied to the person 
as well as to the element essential in his work. It 
found its application in the unusual and sometimes 
fantastic turns of thought, often laboriously conceived, 
that distinguish the writings of Donne and his school. 
QgQjgg " Holy George Herbert," as Izaak Walton 
Herbert, named him, was one of the best examples of 

1593-1632. , . „ „ ^\ 

this group, as well as one oi its most impor- 
tant representatives. In his lengthy poem of good 
counsel, entitled The Church Porch., for example, he 
has this to say : — 

'f 

" Drink not the third glasse which thou canst not tame, 
When once it is within thee ; but before 
May'st rule it, as thou list, and pour the shame, 
Which it would pour on thee, upon the Jioore. 
It is most just to throw that on the ground 
Which would throw me there, if I keep the round." 



THE METAPHYSICAL POETS 201 



Again, in The Sacrifice^ with its refrain o£ simple 
pathos, we are surprised by more than one conceit as 
singular as this : — 

" Behold, they spit on Me in scornful wise ; 
Who hy My spittle gave the blind man eyes, 
Leaving his blindness to Mine enemies : 
Was ever grief like Mine ? " 

Because of this grotesque ingenuity of allusion and 
comparison the term metaphysical was used of these 
poets by Samuel Johnson; and by this title they are 
best described. 

George Herbert was in seriousness of tone and 
saintly character more like Milton than any other of 
the writers here discussed. He was born in Wales, 
and received his university training at Trinity College, 
Cambridge. In 1630 he became Vicar of Bemerton, 
near Salisbury. His poetry is wholly devotional. It 
is he who wrote of Sunday the familiar lines : — 

" day most calm, most bright ! 
The fruit of this, the next world's bud, 
The indorsement of supreme delight, 
Writ by a Friend, and with His blood ; 
The couch of time ; care's balm and bay ; 
The week were dark, but for thy light : 
Thy torch doth show the way." 

Thorough Royalists in their attachments were the 
three poets Quarles, Crashaw, and Vaughan. Francis 
The first named was a student of Christ's i592!fi644. 
(Milton's) College at Cambridge, and was Richard 
later secretary to Archbishop Usher. In his 1613-49.' 
Divine Emblems he produced a moralizing y®^^ 
poem full of the mannerisms of this group. I621-95. 
Richard Crashaw, the son of an Anglican clergy- 
man, was educated at the Charterhouse School and at 
Cambridge. He finally became a Catholic, and during 
the last few years of his life, through the influence of 



202 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



Queen Henrietta Maria, found an asylum in Italy. 
Crashaw greatly resembles Herbert in thought and 
manner. A line from one of his Latin poems, descrip- 
tive of the miracle at Cana, is frequently quoted in 
devotional literature : — 

" Nympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit.''^ 

" The modest water saw its God and blushed." 

His principal volume was entitled (by its editor) 
Steps to the Temple ; it appeared in 1646. 

Henry Vaughan was a Welsh physician ; he pub- 
lished in 1650 a collection of verse, to which he gave 
the title of Silex Scintillans^ or Sparks from the 
Flint. His work also shows the strong influence of 
his countryman, George Herbert. 

Stoutly Puritan in spirit were the two minor poets 
Wither and Marvell. The former, in 1642, 
Wither, sold his estate to raise a troop of horse for 
Andrew Cromwell's army ; the latter had attracted the 
Marvell, attention of Cromwell, and was employed by 
1621-78. j^.^ time of his death. In 1657 

Marvell was appointed assistant to Milton in the Latin 
Secretaryship ; and this association with the great poet 
has made his name more familiar than his verses could 
have done. Marvell's poems were, however, distin- 
guished by their classic flavor and by a very real appre- 
ciation of nature, — a quality not common in the minor 
poetry of the age. They were written for the most 
part in youth. 

Wither's verse is mainly devotional in character, 
consisting of The Hymns and Songs of the Church 
(1623), a translation of the Psalms of David (1631), 
Emblems (1634), and Hallelnjah (1641). A fine pas- 
toral poem. Shepherds Hunting (1613), was the work 
of an earlier period. 



THE CAVALIER POETS 



203 



A singular fate has overtaken the fame of Abraham 
Cowley, who was esteemed by his own gen- ^^y^iiam 
eration the greatest of English poets. He Cowiey, 
was a disciple of the metaphysical school, and 
was made famous by the ingenuity of his verse even 
in boyhood. His first volume appeared when he was 
but fifteen; while a student at Cambridge he wrote 
the larger part of a long epic on King David, the 
Davidels, which he hoped would inspire the composi- 
tion of more biblical epics. Cowley was attached to 
the Royalist cause, and accompanied Queen Henrietta 
Maria, in capacity of secretary, to France. He was 
the author of Pindarique Odes, in imitation of the 
classic poet, and of a series of love poems under the 
title of The Mistress. Although he attained the dis- 
tinction of a burial in Westminster Abbey, Cowley's 
reputation as a poet began to wane soon after his 
death, and he has since occupied a minor position 
among the poets of this group. 

Three or four of the minor poets of this age fall 

naturally into a group by themselves ; these ^j^^ 

are the representative poets of the Cavaliers, lier Poets: 

Gay, light-hearted gentlemen, gallant in both carew,^ 

love and war, fond of the pretty and pleasino^ 1589-1639; 

PI . !• • Sir John 

rather than oi the serious and impressive suckling, 

phases of life's experience, they produced ^^q^^^' 
some dainty and charming verse, but spent Lovelace, 
their talents upon trifling themes of senti- 
ment and pleasure. " Idle singers of an empty day," 
their activity included none of the offices of prophet or 
seer. 

Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace were all prominent 
in the court of Charles I., and are sometimes distin- 
guished by the name of the Carolme poets. Charac- 
teristic of their songs, which still display the artificial 



204 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



and far-fetched imagery of the metaphysical school, are 
the following stanzas of a song by Carew : — 

" Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose, 
For in your beauty's orient peep 
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep ! 



Ask me no more whither doth haste 
The nightingale when May is past, 
For in your sweet dividing throat 
She winters and keeps warm her note ; " 

and so forth. It was Suckling who sang merrily : — 

" Out upon it, I have loved 
Three whole days together ; 
And am like to love three more 
If it prove fair weather. 
Time shall moult away his wings 
Ere he shall discover 
In the whole wide world again 
Such a constant lover." 

His lively Ballad upon a Wedding is one of the 
brightest and prettiest of the graceful compositions of 
the group. His description of the bride is often 
quoted : — 

" Her finger was so small, the ring 
Would not stay on which they did bring ; 
It was too wide a peck : 
And to say truth — for out it must — 
It looked like the great collar — just — 
About our young colt's neck. 
Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
Like little mice, stole in and out. 
As if they feared the light : 
But oh ! she dances such a way ! 
No sun upon an Easter day 
Is half so fine a sight." 

Lovelace strikes a higher note in his verses To 

Lucasta on Going to the Wars : — 

" True, a new mistress now I chase, 
The first foe in the field ; 



ROBERT HERRICK 



205 



And with a stronger faith embrace 

A sword, a horse, a shield. 

Yet this inconstancy is such 

As you, too, shall adore : 

I could not love you, dear, so much, 

LoTed I not honor more." 

The vigorous, hearty spirit of Herrick's verse still 
keeps the fame of that lusty poet green. He ^^^^^^ 
is the foremost of the minor writers in this Herrick, 
seventeenth century group. A student and 
fellow at the University of Cambridge for fourteen 
years, and afterward a clergyman in a quiet vicarage of 
Devon, there is much in his very lively verse to suggest 
other than the studious or clerical profession. In 
spirit Herrick was thoroughly Elizabethan. Corinna 's 
Going a-Maying is one of his best known lyrics : — 

" Come, let us goe, while we are in our prime, 
And take the harmless foUie of the time. 
We shall grow old apace and die 
Before we know our liberty. 

" Gather ye rosebuds while ye may: 
Old time is still a-flying ; 
And this same flower that smiles to-day 
To-morrow will be dying " 

is Herrick's ad\ace " to the virgins, to make much of 
time." 

" Then be not coy, but use your time 
And while ye may, goe marry ; 
For haying lost but once your prime, 
You may forever tarry." 

It was Herrick, too, who described his verse and, 
incidentally, that of his brother minstrels in these 
lines : — 

" I sing of brooks, of blossomes, birds, and bowers ; 
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers ; 
I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes ; 
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridall-cakes." 

There is no indication in his writings that he was 



206 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



moved by the momentous events of tlie days in which 
he lived. There is much of the " joy of mere living," 
and a frequent turning into vulgar sensuality. His 
most characteristic poems are contained in his Hesper- 
ides. The collection entitled Noble Numbers consists 
of devotional songs on the subject of Christ's birth and 
passion. 

Edmund Waller, the last of the metaphysical 
Edmund poets, was a Koyalist, like most of the 
Waller, group ; but he served the Commonwealth as 
1605-87. readily as the Crown, and his reputation is 
that of a turncoat and a coward. Waller was master 
of an eloquent tongue and a lively wit ; he was distin- 
guished as an orator and a versifier. Having indited 
a famous Panegyric to the great Oliver, he greeted 
Charles II. with flattering congratulation Upon His 
Majesty's Happy Return. When the king called the 
poet's attention to the fact that the earlier poem was 
clearly the better of the two. Waller at once replied, 
" Poets, sir, succeed better in fiction than in truth." 

Waller's favorite verse form was the rhymed couplet, 
which appears so conspicuously in the poetry of the 
succeeding age. His influence upon the next great 
poet, John Dryden, was very marked. 

IV. THE restoration: BUNYAN, DRYDEN. 

In November, 1628, while John Milton was about 
John finishing his third year of university life at 
Bunyan. Cambridge, John Bunyan was born at El- 
stow, a village in Bedfordshire, not many miles from 
Cambridge on the west. There was a sharp contrast 
in the conditions that ruled the lives of these two men, 
and yet the son of the Elstow tinker was destined to 
find a place in literature not far below that filled by the 
great Puritan poet himself. 



JOHN BUNYAN 



207 



Bunvan's school days were few and miprodiictive. 

Sucli scliool trainiuo' as lie gained he had at „ , , 

o o ^ Early Lile. 

the Bedford Grammar School, and the little 

he learned he declares that he soon lost. His true ed- 
ucation came through his contact with men. I never 
went to school to Aristotle or Plato," he writes ; " but 
was brought up at my father's house in a very mean 
condition, among a company of poor countrymen." 
Thomas Bunyan, the father of John, describes himself 
as a " brasejer." There was a forge in the little cot- 
tage occupied by him and his family at Elstow, and at 
this forge John Bunyan, too, was taught his father's 
trade. The brazier, or tinker, of that day was often 
upon the road, a not unwelcome visitant at the isolated 
farms, where there was plenty of work to his hand in 
the mending of utensils and tools. Convivial and care- 
less in their habits, these men usually partook of the 
vagabond type, and although John Bunyan affirms that 
he was never a drunkard and never unchaste, he de- 
clares that, even as a child, he "had few equals in 
swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of 
God." At sixteen years of age Bunyan became a sol- 
dier in the Civil War. It is not altogether certain on 
which side he served, but the presumption is that he 
was drafted into Cromwell's army, and that he fought 
under the leadership of Sir Samuel Luke, the promi- 
nent parliamentarian of Bedford, the reputed original 
of Butler's Hiidibras. Bunyan's military career was 
brief, for the campaign was closed at Naseby, some six 
months after he entered the army. Occasional re- 
minders of this period are to be found in Bunyan's 
works, as in the description of the combat with Apol- 
lyon, and the taking of the town of Mansoul, in The 
Holy War. In 1646 Bunyan resumed his trade at El- 
stow, and two or three years later he married. His 



208 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



wife was a pious woman as poor as himself ; her dowry- 
consisted of two religious books then popular, — The 
Plain Man^s Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of 
Piety. " In these," says Bunyan, " I should sometimes 
read with her, wherein I also found some things that 
were somewhat pleasing to me." 

The next four years of Bunyan's life were character- 
Peculiar ^^^^ peculiar mental and spiritual experi- 
Reiigious ences. Intensely sensitive by temperament, 
Experiences. gifted with an imagination abnormally 
active, he now passed through a period of religious strug- 
gle so vivid and so acute that his impressions became 
realities; their e:ffects were profound. Most of the indul- 
gences that he reckoned sins were no more serious than 
the ringing of the church bells and participation in the 
dancing and other Sunday sports upon the village com- 
mon. But these amusements were looked upon by the 
pious Puritans as dangerous vanities, likely to distract 
the soul from its proper aims, and therefore frowned 
upon and rebuked ; and so, one Sunday while engaged 
in some game on Elstow Green, he tells us, " A voice 
did suddenly dart from Heaven into my soul, which 
said, ' Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or 
liave thy sins and go to Hell ? ' At this I was put to 
an exceeding maze. Wherefore I looked up to Heaven 
and was as if I had with the eyes of my understand- 
ing seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me as being 
very hotly displeased with me." One morning, going 
into Bedford, he overheard three or four poor women 
talking together by a cottage door in the sunshine. 
They were speaking of the Christian life, and again 
his sensitive conscience was stirred. Once more he 
came to listen to the women's talk, and there was born 
in him " a great softness and tenderness of heart, and 
a great bending in his mind " toward holy thoughts. 



m BEDFORD JAIL 



209 



Then followed a long experience of alternating hope 
and terror, with grotesque temptations, vivid impres- 
sions as of voices, sudden visions, moments of peace, 
seasons of gloom and despair. At last John Bnnyan 
saw a great light. His conversion was complete. At 
once he joined the communion of Nonconformist breth- 
ren at Bedford, and some years later became the pastor 
of the church. 

The Eestoration period brought much bitter experi- 
ence to the English Dissenters. The leaders insediord 
of the Established Church, in revenge for their 
previous loss of privilege under the severity of Puritan 
rule, now, under Charles II., sought retaliation in stren- 
nons laws asrainst the Nonconformists. The holdino^ 
of conventicles, as the public meetings of Dissenters 
were termed, was rigorously forbidden, and many were 
the brethren of the Puritan faith who now paid by im- 
prisonment and fine the penalty of meeting for public 
worship in the manner which their consciences ap- 
proved. The converted tinker was now a lay preacher 
among his people, and so conspicuous had he become 
because of his popularity and his boldness of speech, 
that he was almost the first to suffer through the 
intolerance of the time. On the 12th of November, 
1660, while preaching to a company of people who had 
gathered in a small hamlet thirteen miles from Bed- 
ford, Bunyan was arrested, and after a farcical trial, 
which he has unmistakably described in the account of 
Faithful's experience at Vanity Pair, he was thro^vn 
into the county jail at Bedford, and for twelve years 
kept a prisoner, sometimes enjoying a degree of lib- 
erty, but for the most part under strict constraint. 
The separation from his wife and two little daughters, 
one of whom was blind, he deeply felt. But he would 
not accept liberty at the price of a promise to abstain 



210 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



from liis religions work. A part of liis time lie gave 
to the making of tagged shoe-lacings for the support 
of his family. By no means alone in his prison, he 
played the part of the apostle, and was a pastor to those 
who were in confinement like himself. Some of Bun- 
yan's sermons thus preached found their way into print. 
During his imprisonment, also, he wrote many tracts, 
among them The Holy City (published 1665) and his 
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners^ the account 
of his own conversion (1666). In 1672, during the 
brief operation of the Declaration of Indulgence, Bun- 
yan was released, and now was formally made pastor 
of the Bedford church. But in the early part of 1675, 
the Declaration having been suspended, he was again 
arrested and confined for six months in the town jail. 
During this second imprisonment it was that this un- 
lettered man of genius wrote his immortal allegory, at 
least in part. The Pilgrim^ s Progress was entered in 
the Stationers' Register under date of December 22, 
1677, and appeared in print early in 1678, not quite four 
years after Milton's death. The immediate popularity 
of the Pilgrirris Progress is shown by the fact that no 
less than ten editions were issued up to 1685. In 1681 
it was printed at Boston, and the following year an 
edition appeared at Amsterdam. Since its first pub- 
lication it has been translated into upwards of eighty- 
four languages and dialects, and has inspired numerous 
imitations. In 1680 Bunyan published The Life and 
Death of Mr, Badman, and in 1682 The Holy War, 
The second part of Pilgrim! s Progress, containing the 
story of Christiania and her children, appeared in 1684, 
During the last years of his life J ohn Bunyan was a 
Later Life ^^^^^us man, greatly beloved by his people. 

Whenever he preached in London, the church 
was crowded to the doors. On one occasion it is said 



PILGEIM'S PROGRESS 



211 



that lie was half pulled, half lifted into the pulpit over 
the heads of the throng. He was noted for his kind 
heart and his works of mercy. Upon his last journey to 
London he rode many miles out of his way to accom- 
plish the reconciliation of a father and son. That good 
errand accomplished, he suffered exposure to severe 
weather on resuming his journey, which resulted in a 
fever, from which he died August 31, 1688, in London. 
His published works, including pamphlets and ser- 
mons, are some sixty in number. 

For consistent and forceful allegory Bunyan's work 

has no rival in modern literature. Says Pilgrim's 
, Progress. 
Macaulay : — 

" Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the 
abstract the interest of the concrete. In the work of many 
celebrated authors, men are mere personifications. We have 
not a jealous man, but jealousy ; not a traitor, but perfidy ; 
not a patriot, but patriotism. The mind of Bunyan, on the 
contrary, was so imaginative that personifications, when he 
dealt with them, became men." 

And thus the characters in Bunyan's dream have 
found a permanent place in the world of letters. Here 
for example is Pliable, who goes a little way with 
Christian on his pilgrimage to the Celestial City, but 
having fallen into the Slough of Despond, scrambles 
out on the nearer side and betakes himself homeward 
to the City of Destruction ; and here is Mr. Talkative, 
who delights to discourse on histories and mysteries, 
but can see no difference between crying out against 
sin and dhhorring sin. Then comes Mr. By-ends of 
Fair-speech, who has always had the luck to jump in 
his judgment with the present way of the times, who 
waits for wind and tide, and is for religion when he 
walks in his golden slippers in the sunshine and with 
applause. The incidents that befall the pilgrims on 



212 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



their journey are subtly imagined and very sugges- 
tively described. Such is the fall into the miry slough 
because of Christian's failure to see the steps — which 
are God's promises ; the false guiding of Mr. Worldly 
Wiseman, who would send Christian to Legality's 
house to be relieved of his burden ; the climbing of 
Hill Difficulty, the encounter with the lions, the fierce 
combat with Apollyon — " the dreadfuUest sight," says 
the dreamer, " that ever I saw." Bunyan's picture of 
Yanity Fair is exceedingly real, and so is his account 
of the experience in Doubting Castle, in the power of 
Giant Despair. Thus does Christian pursue his pil- 
grimage with occasional seasons of joy and refresh- 
ment, as in the House Beautiful, among the shepherds 
on the Delectable Mountains, and amid the flowers and 
pleasant streams of Beulah land ; but for the most 
part contending with the difficulties and perils of the 
road, until the dark and bridgeless river has been safely 
crossed, and he is welcomed with the ringing of bells 
and the blare of trumpets into the Celestial City. It 
is a marvelous panorama of the Christian life. 

Whence did this illiterate man derive the power to 
create so great a masterpiece ? The answer is plain, 
but none the less touches a vital point. The Bedford 
preacher spoke only of what he knew. The adventures 
of Christian and of Hopeful had been his own ; he had 
even entered somewhat into the martyrdom of Faith- 
ful. Nay, more ; the defects and vices of those waver- 
ers and contentious persons who were met with on the 
way had been thorns in his own flesh, and again here, 
he knew all too well whereof he spoke. Deprived of 
the advantages of the schools, he had studied one book 
until he knew it through and through ; that book was 
the English Bible. Not only had he absorbed its doc- 
trine, he had caught something of its very style. In his 



I ^ THE 

Pilgrim's Progrefs 

FROM 

THIS WORLD, 

T O 

That which is to come: 

Delivered under the Similitude of a 

DREAM 

Wherein Is Difcovered , 

The manner of his fetting our, 
His Dangerous Journey; Andfafe 
Arrival at the Defired Countrey. 

/ have ufed Similitudes^ Hof. 12. 10. 

By John Banyan, 
Ei'cenCetianD(!Entuetiacco^di'ng:to€)^Der. 

LONDON, 

Printed {or Nath. Ponder at the Peacock 
in the Poult rey near Ccrnhily 1678. 



FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE, PILGRIM's PROGKESS, 
FIRST EDITION 



214 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



hands the plain vernacular lost all vulgarity ; indeed, 
it took on the tone of epic dignity, and even caught 
some of that rhythmic melody that gives such rare 
charm to the King James version of the Scriptures. 

As I walked thro the wilderness of this world, I lighted 
on a certain place where was a Den ; and I laid me down in 
that place to sleep : and as I slept I dreamed a dream." 

Thus out of his own experience and shrewd insight into 
human nature, with the eloquence of an earnest pur- 
pose and of a simple, unaffected style, he set forth 
these picturesque images of what to him were solemn 
realities ; and what had so mightily impressed John 
Bunyan has been recognized as true by men and women 
of every class and kind.^ 

Richard Baxter, a clergyman in the Church of Eng- 
Lesser l^nd, though in heart and zeal a Puritan, 
Prose: whose religious experience was in some re- 
BaSerf spects like that of Bunyan, was the author of 
Jeremy^' Saints' Everlasting Best (1649), fa- 

Tayior, miliar by title, at least, even to-day. Jeremy 
Thomas^' Taylor, also a clergyman in the Established 
Fuller, Church, a staunch Royalist, was the author of 

1608-61 . 

several notable works, of which the best known 
are his Rules and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) 
and the Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651), 
called " the choicest classics of English devotion." 
Their author was termed by Coleridge " the most elo- 
quent of divines." " Quaint " Thomas Fuller, like 
Baxter and Taylor an Episcopal clergyman, was fa- 
mous for his wit as well as for his wisdom. He wrote 
many books, including a Church History of Britain 

^ See John Bunyan : His Life, Times, and Work, by John Brown, 
Minister of the Church at Bunyan Meeting-, Bedford (Houg-hton, Mifflin 
and Company). This house also publishes an edition of the Pilgrim'' s 
Progress, which contains Macaulay's Essay on Bunyan. 



THE AGE OF DEYDEX 



215 



(1655). It was Fuller who described negroes as "im- 
ages of God, cut in ebony." He designed an epitaph 
for himself, ** Here lies Fuller's earth." 

Most familiar of all the lesser names of this group, 

and dear to all who deliuhT in the lisherman's , , ^ , 
^ , IzaaJiWal- 

craft, is that of Izaak ^Yalton, author of TKe ton, isss- 
Coinpleat Angler (1653), a book full of the 
beauty and crisp freshness of nature, and the influ- 
ences of a happT, loving character. Lamb said of it : 

It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and 
simplicity of heart. ... It would sweeten a man's 
temper at any time to read it : it would Christianize 
every discordant angTv passion." 

In 1651 appeared Hobbes's Levioilian (1651), a 

philosophical treatise upon tlie State. — a work „^ 

-t _ -L _ -1- _ _ Thomas 

which had a large influence upon the politi- Hotbes, 
cal ideas of the century. Mention should be 15S8-1679. 
made also of two important as well as entertaining- 
literary productions of the Restoration period, the 
diaries of Pepys (variously pronounced Peps, samuei 
Peeps, and Pips) and Evelyn. Pepys's Di- ^g|^^' 
ary covers the decade of 1659-69. The 1703. 
writer was Secretary of the Admiralty, and f^i62o"- 
was associated with the people prominent in 170S. 
his day. His Diary is more personal than that of 
Evelyn, and is famous for its quaint frankness, which 
records the most confidential matters with a freedom 
and flavor that are most amusing. John Evelyn was 
a wealthy gentleman of Royalist family, and set forth 
a deal of interesting and valuable material in his Di- 
ary^ which covers the years 1640-1701. 

During the jDeriod which intervened between the 
death of Milton (1674) and the close of the The Age 
century, John Dryden held the foremost place °* Dryden. 
in English letters. By no means a great poet, as that 



216 FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



term is used to-day, Dryden was intellectually great, 
and great also in the degree of influence which he ex- 
erted upon the literature of his generation. In many 
ways he embodied the spirit of his age, just as Milton 
embodied the spirit of Puritan England. Dryden be- 
longed to the Restoration, and his compositions are 
amply characteristic of the temper and teaching of 
the time. It was the period of French influence, in 
both morals and art. The demands of form and style 
were recognized and emphasized as never before. The 
spirit of the age was philosophical and critical rather 
than imaginative. Genuine emotion was reckoned vul- 
gar ; men reasoned rather than felt ; they were skepti- 
cal rather than enthusiastic. Infinite pains were spent 
upon composition, and an elaborately polished style 
was the object of its writers. The principles of the 
French critic, Boileau, commended themselves to Dry- 
den and his admirers ; and it is Boileau's thought that 
Dryden has paraphrased in these lines : — 

" Gently make haste, of labor not afraid ; 
A hundred times consider what you 've said ; 
Polish, repolish, every color lay, 
And sometimes add, but oftener take away." 

Instead of glorious bursts of imaginative creation, 
such as illuminated with unequaled splendor the age 
of Elizabeth and James, the writers of the new school 
discussed politics and ethics, developed the satire in 
verse as well as prose, laid the foundation of the mod- 
ern essay, and established a science of criticism in both 
art and morals. The age was inevitably prosaic, which 
is not saying that in the field of thought it was not a 
prolific or a useful age. In 1671 Isaac Newton had 
announced his theory of light; he published his 
Principia in 1687. In 1690 appeared Locke's Es- 
say Concerning the Human Understanding, These 



JOHN DRYDEN 



217 



were epoch-making works ; they were not products o£ 
an imaginative people, yet they are entirely expressive 
of the best spirit of that era. The drama was left — 
the one field of literary art in which the imagina- 
tion still held sway ; and the drama was viciously im- 
moral — the public mirror in which the shamelessness 
of the English court found as shameless a reflection. 
Here also, unfortunately for his fame, John Dryden 
expressed the manners of his age. Among the plays 
of the Restoration period there are none more gross 
than some of his. With reference to this quality 
of the plays Dryden himself said : " I confess my 
chief endeavors are to delight the age in which I live. 
If the humor of this be for low comedy, small acci- 
dents, and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, 
though with more reputation I could write in verse," — 
an avowal that may explain, although it by no means 
excuses, the fault. It should be said that this was the 
only form of literature that had immediate market 
value, and Dryden was dependent on his pen. 

John Dryden was born at Aid winkle, a village in 
Northamptonshire, August 9, 1631. He stud- j^j^j^jj^y 
ied at Westminster, and became a student of den, i63i- 
Trinity College, Canabridge, where he took 
his degree in 1654. He attained no distinction while at 
the University, and seems not to have cherished much 
affection for his Alma Mater. When Cromwell died in 
1658, Dryden, then twenty-seven years of age, wrote 
some commonplace verse extolling the virtues of the 
great Protector, and two years later celebrated the ad- 
vent of Charles in his poem Astrcea Redux. This 
sudden change of sentiment, however, is not altogether 
derogatory to the poet, for many, even pronounced par- 
tisans of Oliver, looked upon the return of the Stuarts 
as the only road to England's security and peace. In 



218 



FROM BACON TO DRYDEN 



1663 Dryden began to write plays for the London 
stage, and signed a contract to supply a stated number 
annually for a term of years. During this period he 
wrote twenty-eight plays. His tragedies, or " heroical 
plays," were better than his comedies, in dramatic 
merit as well as moral flavor. Of these The Indian 
Emperor (1667) and The Conquest of Granada 
(1672) are notable. In 1666 he produced a very long 
and somewhat curious poem of 304 four-line stanzas 
entitled Annus Mirabilis, celebrating the English vic- 
tories over the Dutch fleet, and describing the great fire 
of London, the most sensational event of this "wonder- 
ful year." But Dryden's power was first truly shown 
in his political satire Absalom and Achitophel (1681). 

This, the keenest of all political satires and most 
Absalom elegant, was directed against the Earl of 
and Shaftesbury, who had plotted to secure the 

Achitophel. succession for the Duke of Monmouth. The 
latter, an illegitimate son of King Charles I., was 
loved by the king and honored with many titles. 
Misguided, however, by the earl, Monmouth organized 
the rebellion which resulted in his downfall. Dryden 
seized upon the parallelism between the career of 
this pretender and that of Absalom as recorded in 
2 Samuel^ and applies the parallel in remarkable 
detail. Shaftesbury is Achitophel, Buckingham is 
Zimri, Cromwell is referred to as Saul, and all the 
prominent nobles are to be recognized under Jewish 
names of David's time. For us some of the serious- 
ness of the satire is lost by the presentation of the dis- 
solute monarch as King David, and by the application 
of the name Bathsheba to the Duchess of Portsmouth, 
his most notorious mistress. The portraitures of 
Shaftesbury and Buckingham are unsurpassed, and 
are often quoted. Of the first Dryden says : — 



DIDACTIC VERSE 



219 



" A dariBg pilot in extremity ; 
Pleased with the danger when the waves ran high 
He sought the storms ; but for a calm unfit, 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 

lu friendship false, implacable in hate, 
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state." 

A second satire, The Medal^ was directed at Shaftes- 
bury (1682), while McFlechnoe (1682) served to pil- 
lory the new laureate, Shadwell, an inferior poet but 
a rival. 

In 1682 Dryden published his Rellgio Laid, or 
Layman s Faith, a defense of the Episcopal Didactic 
Church against both Catholic and Noncon- Verse, 
formist. The poem opens with a fine analysis of rea- 
son : — 

" Dim as the borrowed beams of moon." 

Five years later the poet had himself turned Catholic, 
and in the Hind and the Panther (1687) defended the 
claims of Eomanism more earnestly than he had argued 
the former cause. The Church of Eome is figured in 
the Milk- White Hind " immortal and unchanged,'' 
while the Church of England is represented by 

" The Panther, sure the noblest, next the Hind, 
And fairest creature of the spotted kind." 

Dryden had been made laureate in 1670. With the 
advent of William and Mary in 1688, the poet lost his 
office and his pension, but did not renounce his Catho- 
lic creed. Indeed, though Dryden had changed his 
politics and his religion at times so conspicuously apt 
as to arouse suspicions of his sincerity, there is reason 
to believe that in both he was honest. Certainly he 
did not turn back in the face of positive loss, as did 
many of his contemporaries who ebbed with the tide. 

During the last ten years of the poet's life he em- 
ployed his talents largely in translation, turning into 



220 FROM BACON TO DKYDEN 



brilliantly polislied heroic couplets tlie tales of Ovid 
and of Homer, the Satires of Juvenal and Persius, and 
the ^neid of Vergil entire. Dryden's Vergil is one 
of the great translations ; it added much to his fame. 
He also paraphrased three of Chaucer's Canterhury 
Tales^ — Palamon and Arcite, The Cock and the JFox, 
and The Wife of BatNs Tale. A study of these 
rhymed couplets, perfect as they are, with such origi- 
nals as Chaucer and Vergil, will explain sufficiently 
why the term artificial is applied to the work of Dry- 
den and his school. 

Among the minor poems but two are noted, Alex- 
ander s Feasts an Ode in Honor of St. Cecilia's Day 
(1667) and A Song for St. Cecilia'' s Day (1687). 
Both contain some striking examples, frequently quoted, 
of the correspondence of sound and sense. 

Among his contemporaries Dryden's authority was 
supreme. To them he was " glorious John ; " and he 
held his little court at Will's Coffee-House, where men 
of letters were accustomed to resort. His influence 
dominated the literature of the next fifty years, and the 
rhymed couplet was the established form of English 
verse until the time of Gray. In his prose Dryden 
was as brilliant as in verse, and his numerous pre- 
faces and arguments are worthy of a place among our 
classics. 

Of the character of his genius Lowell has this to 
say in his essay on the poet : " To read him is as bra- 
cing as a northwest wind. He blows the mind clear. 
In mind and manner his foremost quality is energy. In 
ripeness of mind and bluff heartiness of expression he 
takes rank with the best. His phrase is always a short- 
cut to his sense. . . . He had beyond most the gift of 
the right word.^ " 

^ Riverside Edition of LowelVs Works (Prose), vol. iii. p. 189. 



SAMUEL BUTLER 



221 



Dryden died May 1, 1700, and was buried with tlie 

poets in Westminster Abbey. 

Tlie publication of the first part of Hudibras in 

1663 brous^ht literary fame to Samuel Butler. 

^ , . Samuel 

This long poem, completed in 1678, is a Butier, 

coarse but exceedingly witty burlesque of 

the Puritan cause and character. Some of its pungent 

lines are now^ familiar quotations, the source of which 

has long been forgotten ; for example, — 

" He that complies against his will 
Is of the same opinion still." 

" Look before you ere you leap." 

Butler is thought to have taken, as the original of his 
caricature, the person of Sir Samuel Luke, a stout- 
hearted, valiant Puritan squire living near Bedford. 
This gentleman, in whose household Butler was at one 
time a clerk, commanded the Parliamentary forces 
raised in that vicinity, and in all probability was the 
officer under whom John Bunyan performed military 
service. 



CHAPTER V 



THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 

T. The Augustan Age of English Prose. 
II. The Poetry of Alexander Pope. 

III. The Rise of the English Novel. 

IV. Essayists of the Second Half. 

V. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry. 

I. THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLISH PROSE. 

The general characteristics of Englisli literary and 
social life at the beginning of the eighteenth century 
were the natural development of conditions immedi- 
ately following the period of the Restoration. The 
influence of John Dryden was a noticeable force in 
letters throughout the first half of the century. French 
models, as interpreted by him, and French ideals of 
literary style were affected by the poets and dramatists 
who followed in his wake. An unwise attempt to imi- 
tate the methods of Greek and Roman classic writers 
was accompanied by a natural deterioration in original- 
ity and in real creative power. Because of these con- 
ditions the period is sometimes designated as the 
Period of French Influence, the poets are described 
as belonging to the classic school, and their work is 
often characterized as representing the Artificial age 
in English verse. 

The eighteenth century was an age in which men 
measured and investigated rather than dreamed, and 



POLITICS 



223 



while poetry lost much of its spontaneity and im- 

ao'Ination, it pained in correctness of form 

. . . The Prose, 

and finish — an element not without value in 

its later development. On the other hand, the devel- 
opment of English prose during this century is truly 
remarkable. The easy, graceful style of Steele and 
Addison, admirably suited to the pleasant narrative 
form of the essay which they introduced, the terse, 
incisive keenness of Swift's satire, the elaborate, pol- 
ished phrase of Johnson's later prose, the clear, ade- 
quate English of Hume, the eloquent imagery of 
Gibbon and Burke — these are features which give 
distinction to the literature of the eighteenth century, 
and should be recognized as no inglorious accomplish- 
ments. We sometimes speak slightingly of this " age 
of prose ; but it should be remembered that prose, as 
truly as verse, is an artistic creation, and that the 
lucid force of our best English style has been acquired 
only by stages of growth, in the course of which the 
achievement of these eighteenth century writers is as 
essential as it was remarkable. The application to this 
period of yet another term — that of the Augustan 
age — is therefore not without appropriate significance. 

Perhaps the student has noted already the active 
participation in public affairs of many of the pontics 
great writers in preceding centuries ; of those 
prominent in the age of Anne the same is true. The 
reign of Anne is famous for the growth of party organ- 
ization and party influence. Ever since the days of 
the Commonwealth, the people and their popular lead- 
ers are recognized as more and more important factors 
in the disposition of public affairs. Political contro- 
versy and party spirit rose higher and higher, but the 
tone of their expression in literature, while bitter 
enough in the satires of Swift, was by no means so 



224 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



abusively personal as in tliose of Dryden ; and there 
was nothing at all corresponding to the brutality ex- 
hibited in the literary battles of Puritan and Cavalier. 
Argument rather than abuse became the weapon of 
attack ; wit superseded malicious vulgarity, and men 
aimed to be polite — at least in form of expression — 
even in the heat of debate. 

Royalists and Independents were now distinguished 
Parties other party names. Those who supported 

the old principles of the Stuarts, in behalf of 
the royal prerogative and the supreme authority of the 
Established Church, were known as Tories ; while those 
who championed the more liberal policy of constitu- 
tional government and maintained the right of dissent 
were known as Whigs. The Eevolution of 1688, 
which sent James II. into exile and established a Pro- 
testant government under William of Orange and 
Mary, the elder daughter of James, was a victory for 
the Whigs. In 1702, upon the death of William, who 
survived his consort by eight years, the succession fell 
on Anne, second daughter of James. Anne began her 
reign under Tory influences, which were afterward 
modified by the vigor of the Whigs. The prosecution 
of the French campaigns under the leadership of Anne's 
great general, Marlborough, formed a prolific subject 
for party contention. The literature of the period is 
distinctly colored by these events ; indeed the allusions 
are so numerous that much of that literature is unintel- 
ligible without a knowledge of the conditions just 
described. 

The manners of the age were coarse, and moral 
Morals standards still suffered, at the beginning of 
the centur}^ from the degrading influences 
of the period preceding; but the literature of this _ 
century is far from being immoral. The frankness and 



ADDISON 



225 



realism that characterize it should be interpreted in the 
light of its obvious purpose to inform and to correct. 
All the essayists were moralists, looking upon life with 
a pleasant perception of its humors as well as of its 
frailties. Quite in the spirit of Chaucer they satirized 
its follies and rebuked its faults. It is a proof of their 
sincerity that they introduced a respect for virtue and 
roused society to an appreciation of better things. The 
new position of woman intellectually is most notewor- 
thy. Literature now paid respect to her interests and 
tastes. The essays of Addison and Steele were ad- 
dressed as directly to women as to men, and the first 
novels of Richardson were planned primarily for their 
benefit. Before the century closed, women, too, had 
learned how to write, and had found a place in litera- 
ture for themselves. 

The names of Addison and Steele are naturally as- 
sociated by reason of their literary partner- Joseph 
ship in the publication of the Tatler and Addison, 

1672- 

the Spectator. They were comrades in their 1719. 
school days ; both were, during the same pe- g/gg^ig'^ 
riod, pupils in the old Charterhouse School 1672- 
in London, and for three or four years saw 
each other at Oxford, although not members of the 
same college. The graceful, polished style of Addison, 
the genial temper and easy naturalness of Steele — 
these qualities combined to introduce an entirely new 
form of composition, which greatly increased the at- 
tractive charm of our English prose. To the talents 
of these two men we owe the beginning of the light, 
familiar essay. 

Joseph Addison was born at Milston, in Wiltshire, 
the son of the rector, Lancelot Addison, who ^^^^ 
afterward became Dean of Lichfield. After 
taking his master's degree at Oxford in 1693, the young 



226 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



man began his literary career with a poem addressed 
to Dryden ; and in the following year published a ver- 
sified Account of the Greatest English Poets^ interest- 
ing as a youthful essay, in which Dryden is justly 
praised, Spenser depreciated, and Shakespeare not even 
mentioned. In 1695 Addison addressed a complimen- 
tary poem to King William, which attracted the atten- 
tion of the Whig leaders and opened the road to a 
political career by way of literature. Four years there- 
after the poet was granted a pension of £300, and, at 
the suggestion of the Government, went to the Continent 
to enlarge his experience by travel. Having visited 
France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Holland, he re- 
turned home in 1703, recalled by the fall of the Whig 
party at the accession of Anne. A poetical Letter 
from Italy ^ addressed to Lord Halifax, gave Addison 
some repute as a poet, and, incidentally, prepared the 
way for a subsequent and more ambitious effort. 

Through the turn in his fortune caused by the political 
The Cam- situation, Addison found himself in extreme 
paign. financial difficulties. He occupied a garret 
up three flights of stairs in the Haymarket. But in 
1704 occurred the notable victory of Anne's great gen- 
eral, Marlborough, at Blenheim ; and in celebration of 
that victory, Addison, through the good offices of Lord 
Halifax, was commissioned to prepare an appropriate 
poem. Thus came his first actual success, The Cam- 
paign. A particular passage in this poem, exalting 
the generalship of Marlborough, closed with a compar- 
ison which made the poet famous : — 

" So when an angel by divine command, 
With rising tempests shakes the guilty land 
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed), 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." 



STEELE 



227 



Says Thackeray : — 

" Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was 
pronounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. 
That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and 
landed him in the place of commissioner of appeals — vice 
Mr. Locke, providentially promoted. In the following year, 
Mr. Addison went to Hanover with Lord Halifax, and the 
year after was made under-secretary of state." ^ 

Addison's public services were rendered mainly by his 
pen. He afterward entered Parliament, but on account 
of diffidence rose to speak but once, and then, without 
speaking, abruptly sat down again. 

Richard Steele, in many points the direct opposite 
of his friend, was born in Dublin, the son of ^^^^^^ 
an English attorney, secretary to the lord- 
lieutenant of Ireland. Left to the care of an uncle by 
the death of both parents, while Steele was yet a child, 
he was placed at the Charterhouse School, and sent to 
the University in 1692. His impulsive temper was 
exhibited three years later, when he suddenly left Ox- 
ford and enlisted as a private in the Horse Guards. 
He was soon promoted to a captaincy, but resigned his 
commission, and, through Addison's influence, was ap- 
pointed official gazetteer, with a salary of ^300. Im- 
provident but good-humored and light-hearted, " Dick " 
Steele, as he is still affectionately called, is one of the 
universally attractive characters in English literature. 
It is indicative of his passing moods that while under 
confinement for dueling in 1701, he wrote a manual 
of devotion entitled The Christian Hero^ and when 
disturbed by the coolness with which his effort was re- 
ceived by his associates, he wrote two or three indiffer- 
ent comedies to counteract the serious impression. He 
also gave some time to the search for the " philosopher's 

^ Thackeray, English Humourists. 



228 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



stone." Macaulay, in his Essay on Addison^ states the 
case vigorously, but not without truth. Steele, he 
says, ' 

" was one of those people whom it is impossible either to 
hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections 
warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his princi- 
ples weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting ; 
in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. 
In speculation he was a man of piety and honor ; in practice 
he was much of the rake, and a little of the swindler." 

In 1709 was launched the enterprise which brought 
Periodical "^^^ active expression the characteristic tal- 
Literature. ents of both Steele and Addison. Steele be- 
gan the publication of the Tatler. While the ap- 
pearance of this little sheet was indeed something of a 
novelty to readers of that day, Steele's venture was by 
no means the first in periodical literature. During the 
period of the Civil War preceding the Commonwealth, 
the heated controversies of the time gave rise to a large 
number of weekly publications representing the differ- 
ent sides. In 1663 the Government determined to mo- 
nopolize the right to publish news, and established a 
journal called The Public Intelligencer^ which gave 
place to The Oxford Gazette^ and this, in turn, to 
The London Gazette in 1666. The office of gazet- 
teer became a regular ministerial appointment, and it 
was to the control of this journal that Steele was him- 
self appointed, at Addison's suggestion, in 1705. In 
1702 The Daily Courant was established. It ran for 
thirty years, and perhaps deserves the distinction of 
being the first real newspaper in England. That re- 
markably industrious and versatile writer, Daniel De- 
foe, entered the field with his little Review ^ in 1704. 

1 See page 268. 



PERIODICAL LITERATURE 



229 



This publication was not merely political in its scope, 
but included news items, articles suggested by them, 
and occasional essays. There was one department con- 
ducted under the head of The Scandalous Club ; and 




SCENE IN A TYPICAL ENGLISH COEFEE-HOUSE 
From the heading of an old Broadside of 1674. 

this feature of Defoe's Revieiu^ together with the es- 
says on themes of popular interest, undoubtedly sup- 
plied the hint which brought the Tatler^ the Spec- 
tator^ and numerous similar publications into the field. 
At the date when Steele brought out his Tatler there 
were at least a dozen newspapers, so-called, appearing 
in London regularly on post days, which were Tues- 



230 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



days, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and half that num- 
ber published on the alternate days of the week. 

There was another feature in the social life of this 
The Coffee- period as intimately related to the essay 
Houses. writing of Steele and Addison as was the ex- 
istence of this periodical literature ; this was the insti- 
tution of the London coffee-house. In 1652 coffee was 
first introduced into England as a beverage of common 
use, and houses of public entertainment where coffee 
was dispensed became the common places of resort for 
masculine society. According to one authority there 
were three thousand coffee-houses in England in 1708, 
when Steele was beginning to plan for the issue of his 
little paper. Some of these resorts filled the place of 
the modern club. In London, men of affairs thronged 
the coffee-houses daily, so that these became the com- 
mon exchanges of news, and also of ideas. Among 
those oftenest mentioned were Garraway's, where tea 
was first retailed ; the Jerusalem, one of the earliest of 
all the news rooms ; Jonathan's, the resort of the bro- 
kers in 'Change Alley ; Lloyds', the precursor of the 
noted exchange for marine intelligence, and headquar- 
ters for marine insurance at the present day ; Tom's, 
in Cornhill; Dick's, and Will's. At this last-named 
house it was customary for men of literary tastes and 
professional men to gather ; here J ohn Dry den had oc- 
cupied the seat of honor in his day, having his chair 
placed on the balcony in summer, and in winter occu- 
pying the warmest nook in the room. Pope was 
brought thither when a child, that he might at least 
look on the great man and hear him speak. Swift and 
Addison, as well as Steele, were frequent guests. Cur- 
rent gossip of the bookshops and the theatres circu- 
lated among its stalls. Students from the universities, 
clergymen in gown and cassock, scribblers of many 



THE COFFEE-HOUSES 



231 



ranks, thronged the rooms, blue with tobacco smoke, 
where they chatted and listened by turns. It was in 
this very atmosphere that the Tatler was born ; the 
tone of easy familiarity, the vivacious wit, the ready 
omniscience of the coffee-house oracle — all were plea- 
santly infused by Steele into the pages of his genial 
Tatler, and by both writers into the Spectator after- 
ward. Both papers abound in allusions to these re- 
sorts. Steele's first number, in outlining the plan of 
the new periodical, states that 

" all accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall 
be under the article of White's chocolate-house ; poetry under 
that of Will's coffee-house ; learning under the title of Gre- 
cian [so named because first managed by a Greek] ; foreign 
and domestic news, you will have from St. James's coffee- 
house [headquarters for the Whigs] ; and whatever else I 
have to offer on any subject shall be dated from my own 
apartment." 

This programme was for some time adhered to in 
the arrangement of the paper. In his character of the 
Spectator, Addison has this to say in the first issue of 
that periodical : — 

" There is no place of general resort wherin I do not often 
make my appearance ; sometimes I am seen thrusting my 
head into a round of politicians at Will's and listening with 
great attention to the narratives that are made in these little 
circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Childs', 
and while I seem attentive to nothing but The Postman^ 
overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I ap- 
pear on Tuesday night at St. James's coffee-house, and some- 
times join the httle committee of politics in the inner room, 
as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is like- 
wise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-tree, and in 
the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I 

1 Title of a newspaper. Compare Thackeray on these periodicals in 
his English Humourists. 



232 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for 
above these two years ; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the 
assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's.'* 

Having reviewed thus the conditions so favorable to 
The experiment, it is easy to see how the 

Tatier. conception of that famous little sheet, the 
Tatler^ developed in the sanguine mind of Richard 
Steele. Humor was an element which had not yet ap- 
peared — intentionally — in the publications then cur- 
rent ; but Dick Steele was a humorist of genuine and 
happy type. In the first issue of his paper the spirit 
of his genial, lively nature found prompt expression, 
and to the pervasive presence of this agreeable quality 
must we assign in part the immediate popularity of his 
enterprise. Something of a serious purpose is also 
avowed by the author in the dedication of the first com- 
pleted volume : — 

" The general purpose of this Paper is to expose the false 
arts of life, to pull ofB the disguises of cunning vanity and 
affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our 
dress, our discourse, and our behavior." 

The Tatier appeared on post days, three times a 
week ; the sheet was small, and sold for a penny ; the 
first number was issued April 12, 1709, the last, Janu- 
ary 2, 1711. Contributions were accepted from various 
writers, some of whom were not identified until the 
publication of the final volume. Addison, who de- 
tected the personality of Steele on reading the sixth 
number, contributed forty-one of the papers, and, in 
conjunction with his friend, wrote thirty-four others; 
but of the 271 Tatlers 188 were written by Steele. 

Two months after the cessation of the Tatier Steele 
was ready with a new venture, and March 1, 1711, he 
issued the first Spectator. In this publication Joseph 



THE SPECTATOR 



233 



Addison soon became the dominant spirit, and with 
the essays published in this most famous of TheSpec- 
the literary periodicals his fame as an Eng- 
lish writer is most closely connected. He wrote 274 
of the 555 numbers which composed the first series, 
and twenty-four of the second series, which appeared 
in 1714. Of the 635 numbers included in both the 
first and second Spectator^ Steele produced 240. 

The famous " Club," which forms the most impor- 
tant feature of the periodical, was originated by Steele ; 
but Addison so elaborated and appropriated the char- 
acters of its members, particularly that of Sir Roger 
de Coverley^ the amiable country squire, that this por- 
tion of the work is justly attributed to him. 

The success of the Spectator surpassed that of its 
predecessor. There was no attempt to furnish the 
news ; each number contained a finished essay. In 
the tenth number the Spectator declares, in his own 
character : — 

" The mind that hes fallow but a single day sprouts up in 
follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous 
culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy 
down from heaven to inhabit among men ; and I shall be 
ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philoso- 
phy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell 
in clubs and assembhes, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses." 

That the hopes of the essayist were not disappointed 
may be inferred from the following letter, printed in 
Number 92 of the periodical : — 

" Mr. Spectator, — Your paper is a part of my tea- 
equipage ; and my servant knows my humor so well that, in 
calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual 
hour), she answered the Spectator was not yet come in, but 
the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment." i 

1 This, was a genuine communication from a Miss Shepherd. 



234 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



The statement has been made that the paper reached 
a circulation of 10,000 copies ; upon some special 
occasions this may very possibly have been true. 

In 1713 Addison's tragedy of Cato was produced 
Cato with notable success. Contemporary critics 

were extravagant in its praise. Pope wrote 
a prologue ; Swift, with whom Addison had been 
on hostile terms owing to party antagonism, joined in 
the general congratulation. Cato was translated into 
French, Italian, German, and even into Latin. Vol- 
taire called it " the first reasonable English tragedy." 
Yet Addison's drama is an artificial work, formal, pas- 
sionless ; it embodies the prosaic spirit of the time and 
does not rise above the rules of art which that age 
deemed correct. It is classic in form as in subject and 
follows strictly the law of the unities. It is highly 
rhetorical and lofty in tone. Cato's soliloquy, begin= 
ning 

" It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well ! — 
Else whence this pleasing- hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality ? " 

is a familiar passage introducing a really impressive 
scene. 

Addison's marriage with the Countess of Warwick 
Closing 1716 was followed by further political ad- 

Years, vancement. He became Secretary of State in 
1717, retiring with a pension of £1500 in the following 
year. Unhappily, political differences, aggravated by 
Steele's carelessness in money obligations, induced a 
quarrel between these old-time friends which was never 
healed. Steele in The Pleheian^ and Addison in TTie 
Old Whig^ engaged in a stormy controversy, which was 
ended by the death of Addison in 1719. Steele con- 
tinued to busy himself with various journalistic schemes, 
largely of a partisan character, establishing successively 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 235 

The Englishman^ The Reader^ The Plebeian^ and The 
Theatre. He had quarreled with Swift, had obtained 
and lost a seat in Parliament, held some minor offices 
under George I., again entered Parliament, and con- 
tinued writing till his death in 1729. 

The influence of these two essayists was not confined 
to literary form ; both were moralists in purpose, as we 
have seen, and Addison, particularly, infused a spirit 
of clean and wholesome morality into the literature of 
the century. 

The naturalness of Addison's expression is its most con- 
spicuous quahty. He seems to have written just suggestions 
as he would have spoken ; and Pope declared that g°^^^^®pj 
his conversation had something in it more charm- Addison's 
ing than he had found in that of any other man.^ Prose. 
Addison's vocabulary should be noted, particularly the use 
of familiar and common terms. In examining the sentence 
form it would be well to get the proportion, approximately, 
of sentences which have a loose structure and those which 
are periodic. The directness of the style is noticeable ; he 
advances to his point without deviation, and never goes out 
of his way to secm-e a fine effect. Compare Addison's prose 
with that of Bacon, noting the different degrees of brevity, 
and the manner which characterizes each. 

In the study of Addison, however, the important point is 
to find the personal quality, the individuality, of the man, 
which is of more value than the elements which make up the 
Addisonian style. His humor and his wit should be studied 
to see whether his satire is bitter or sharp. Is his tone cyni- 
cal, or does it voice a spirit in sympathetic touch with his 
fellows ? A comparison has been sometimes drawn between 
Addison and Steele to the advantage of the latter in this re- 
spect. 

In his reading the student will naturally turn to those fa- 
mihar sketches of the Club which are chiefly occupied with 

1 Spence's Anecdotes. 



236 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



the history and portraiture of attractive old Sir Roger. The 
reader should ascertain the reasons for the creation of this, 
and the other lesser characters. What purpose are they in- 
tended to fulfill ? The essay contained in the second Spec- 
tator will make clear the general plan, as Steele designed it ; 
and the fourth Spectator shows us Addison's introduction of 
the characters in a typical debate. The portrait of Sir Roger 
deserves careful study, for it represents outside the drama 
the first actual accomplishment in the delineation of real 
character drawn direct from English life. 

The student should become acquainted with other of Addi- 
son's essays besides those contained in this attractive group. 
Macaulay suggests the reading, at one sitting, of the two 
Visits to Westminster Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange^ 
the Journal of the Retired Citizen^ the Vision of Mirza, 
the Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and the Death of 
Sir Roger de Coverley. To these should be added several 
of the papers which deal with some of the trifling follies of 
fashion and manners, such as The Fine Lady's Journal, 
Party Patches, The Exercise of the Fan, and Household 
Superstitions. Nor should we omit altogether the critical 
essays, like that upon Chevy Chase, and the essays on Milton. 
A convenient edition of the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers 
will be found in Numbers 60, 61, of the Riverside Litera- 
ture Series (Houghton, Mifflin and Company). Macaulay 's 
Essay on Addison is a classic, and Thackeray's portraits of 
both Addison and Steele in his English Humourists are most 
vivacious studies of these men and their age. Chapters 
upon the so-called newspapers of that day, and upon the 
coffee-houses and clubs, will be found in Courthope's Life of 
Addison, in English Men of Letters Series, and in W. C. 
Sydney's England and the English in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury (Macmillan). Johnson's Addison, in his Lives of the 
Poets, is interesting; and the brief essay introducing the 
volume of selections from Addison, edited by J. R. Green 
(Macmillan), is particularly valuable. Upon the life of 
Steele the biography by G. A. Aitken is authority. Austin 
Dobson's Life of Steele^ in the English Worthies Series, is 



JONATHAN SWIFT 



237 



a good, brief biography. A careful reading of Thackeray's 
great novel, Henry Esmond, will prove as profitable as it 
will be entertaining ; no more vivid picture of this period in 
English history has ever been produced. 

Jonathan Swift is the foremost English satirist in 
prose. It is no easy matter to arrive at a Jonathan 
just interpretation of this man's character, ^^^'^j^^ 
One of the keenest of wits, he was for the 
first thirty years of the eighteenth century the intellec- 
tual master of his age. Although his remarkable tal- 
ents received scant recognition from those in power, 
his influence in moulding public opinion was extraor- 
dinary ; and for a brief period he appears a conspicu- 
ous figure among the party leaders whose measures 
he supported by the sharpness and vigor of his pen. 
Imperious, caustic, at times brutal, in the strenuous 
expression of his views, he domineered over friends and 
foes. In the height of his success in London he once 
sent the Lord Treasurer into the House of Commons 
to call out the principal Secretary of State in order to 
say that he would not dine with him if he intended 
to dine late. He warned Lord Bolingbrok^, the head 
of the Tory government, not to appear cold to him, 
for he would not be treated like a schoolboy. " If 
we let these great ministers pretend too much," he 
says, "there will be no governing them." Yet the 
life of Dean Swift was embittered by disappointment 
and clouded with melancholy. Early in life he felt 
the premonitions of brain disease, and foretold the 
mental decay in the gloom of which his great genius 
was to expire. "I shall die like that," he said once, 
while w^alking with the poet Young, pointing to a tree 
whose branches were dead at the top. To the subtle 
working of disease we must attribute some of the 



238 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



eccentricities of Jonathan Swift ; to that, too, in part, 
the terrible cynicism with which he looked on human- 
ity at large. 

Swift was born in Dublin, of English parentage. 
Early Diffi- "^^^ father, who had held some minor clerk- 
cuities. ship, was already dead when his son was born, 
and there was scarcely the barest provision for the 
family support. For many years Mrs. Swift was de- 
pendent on her brother-in-law, Godwin Swift, under 
whose direction and by whose aid Jonathan was sent 
to school at Kilkenny, where he had for a school fel- 
low William Congreve, afterward the most popular 
play-writer of that generation ; and then to Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin, later the college of Goldsmith and Burke. 
During his youth Swift led a rather wild ^nd stormy 
life, neglecting his courses at will, although, independ- 
ently of his curriculum, he read widely in history and 
literature. In 1686 he was given a degree " by special 
favor." Disappointed and vexed at his mishaps. Swift 
always recurred to this experience with bitterness ; for 
his uncle's assistance he expressed only sarcastic con- 
tempt. 

In 1688, the year of the Kevolution, Swift came of 
necessity to England, and soon found employ- 
ADepend ^-^^^^ with Sir William Temple, a kinsman, 
England. jj^^j retired after a distinguished public 

career and was living at Moor Park in Surrey. ^ As 
a member of Temple's household this proud and mor- 
bidly self-conscious youth again found himself depend- 
ent on the generosity of a patron, occupying a position 
somewhat above that of a servant, and subject to con- 
ditions exasperating to one of his temperament and 
gifts. As Sir William's secretary, however, he enjoyed 
many advantages ; there was time for study, and his 

^ See Macaulay's Essay on Sir William Temple. 



THE FIEST SATIEES 



239 



failure at the University was now largely redeemed.^ 
Here, also, was opportunity to observe the methods of 
party policy and leadership, with favorable introduc- 
tion to the men most prominent in affairs of state. 
King William himself took note of the young man, and 
made promises of advancement which, unhappily, were 
never fulfilled. 

Upon the death of Temple in 1699, Jonathan Swift 
went back to Ireland as secretary to the Earl g^^j^ ^ 
of Berkeley, the lord deputy. The year after Chuxcii- 
he accepted the Church living of Laracor, 
which he retained for ten years. Swift had taken 
Church orders in 1694, and however unfortunate his 
choice of a profession may appear, — a profession for 
which both by temper and talents he would seem to 
have been singularly disqualified, — we do not find 
him at this period or later disregarding his duties 
or slisrhtino^ his oblio^ations to the Church. In 1701 
he went to England on ecclesiastical business at the 
instance of the Bishop of Dublin ; and during the 
years 1701-10 was able to divide his time between 
Laracor and London, so that about half of each year 
was passed in a society far more congenial to his ac- 
tive, vigorous mind than that afforded by an Irish vic- 
arage. 

When Swift appeared thus in London, his name was 
not unknown to that circle of scholars and Thepirgt 
politicians, professional men and wits, who Satires, 
gossiped, at the coffee-houses, where Congreve, the dra- 
matist, Matthew Prior, the poet, Dick Steele, editor of 
The Gazette, and the dignified, rather reticent Mr. 
Addison, now rapidly advancing in the good graces of 
the Whigs, were among the most brilliant of the lit- 

^ Swift reeeired the master's degree in 1692 from Oxford, and in 
1701 that of LL. D. from Dublin. 



240 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



erary group ; for this capable representative of the 
Irish Church was generally known to be the author of 
two pamphlets which had already brought him no 
small fame, in spite of the fact that they had circulated 
anonymously and were not published until 1704. 
These were his two satires The Tale of a Tub and 
The Battle of the Books. The first was written in 
1696. Although the first of Swift's serious efforts, it 
remains not only the most perfect of his essays, but 
stands as perhaps the best example of the prose satire 
in English. Its whimsical title is explained in the 
preface by reference to the fact " that seamen have a 
custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an 
empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from 
laying violent hands upon the ship." The ship, in this 
case, may stand for the Government, including the two- 
fold relations of Church and State ; and this pamphlet 
is tossed out to those who are hostile to religion and 
government, in order to divert their attacks. In this 
satire occurs the famous parable of Peter, Martin, and 
Jack (typifying the Koman Church, the Church of the 
Reformation, and the Calvinists), who inherit coats, 
exactly of one pattern, with specific directions as to 
how they shall be worn. The manner in which these 
three sons succeed in evading the terms of their father's 
will is described with blunt vigor and much pictur- 
esque wit. So strong is the satire, and so bold the 
handling of themes more or less sacred, that charges of 
irreverence and even of blasphemy were laid against 
the daring young writer, and Swift's subsequent failure 
to reach the higher preferments of the Church may be 
attributed to his authorship of this tract. The work 
did, however, give him immediate standing among the 
strongest writers of the day. 

The Battle of the Boohs was a slighter effort, bright 



BICKERSTAFF 



241 



and spirited and distinctly humorous in tone. Sir 
William Temple bad become involved in a protracted 
discussion over the comparative merits of ancient and 
modern literature, and into this not very dignified 
squabble his keen-witted secretary (it was in 1696-97) 
injected the humor of his burlesque. The satire sup- 
plies a mock-heroic narrative of the encounter and 
disasters which occur in a desperate battle fought be- 
tween the ancient and the modern books. Sir Wil- 
liam's enemies are utterly destroyed, the two most 
conspicuous champions being neatly spitted together 
on a single lance. 

With Addison and Steele, Swift was for several 
years more or less closely associated, although ^^^5^^^^^^,^ 
he afterward quarreled with both. He con- 
tributed papers to the Tatler, and himself originated 
the character of Isaac Bickerstaff^ which Steele as- 
sumed when he launched that paper upon its pleasant 
career. Among the petty superstitions which were 
then prevalent, against which much of the mild satire 
of Addison and Steele was subsequently directed, was 
a vulgar belief in the assumptions of astrology ; and 
one of the more prominent quacks of the day, who 
lived upon the ignorance and folly of the common 
people, was a so-called astrologer by the name of Par- 
tridge. In 1707 Swift published, under the name of 
Bicherstaff^ certain predictions for the ensuing year, 
among which he foretold the death of Partridge upon 
a date which he fixed by the formulae of the science 
itself. Although the victim of the joke protested that 
he was still alive after the date fixed for his demise, 
Bicherstaff proved publicly that he must be dead ; and 
other humorists supported the assertion so effectively 
that the would-be astrologer was fairly laughed out of 
business if not out of existence. The circumstance 



242 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



gave such prominence to tlie name of Isaac Bicher staff 
that Steele was glad, as a matter of advantage, to 
appropriate it to his own use. 

But Swift's activity was employed in other and more 
ThePoii- serious directions than in the mere play of his 
tician. Yf\i^ jje }^2idi a genius for politics ; was prob- 
ably the great political genius of his time. From the 
Whigs, with whose party successes Addison's advance- 
ment had been so closely associated, he never received 
that recognition which his abilities deserved, and their 
indifference to his talents drove him out of that party 
in disgust. In 1710 the Tories again came into power; 
Swift was cordially welcomed to their council, and the 
period of his prominent participation in national poli- 
tics begins. For eight months he conducted The Ex- 
aminer^ a weekly series of political essays wholly the 
work of his own pen. In 1711 he prepared a pamphlet 
on The Conduct of the Allies, his strongest political 
paper. Swift was now urging his claims on the Govern- 
ment, but not until 1713 did he receive his tardy pro- 
motion to the not very desirable office of Dean of St. 
Patrick's in Dublin — the highest appointment he ever 
attained. Following the accession of George I. in 
1714, and the downfall of the Tory cabinet, his public 
career was closed ; in thoroughly pessimistic mood he 
returned once more to Ireland and settled down to his 
estate, nursing his grievances and quick to arraign the 
blunders of those now in power. 

Along with the numerous pamphlets and articles 
devoted to party affairs and Church interests 
Journal in Ireland, we owe to this period of London 
to Stella. residence a volume of rare interest; this is 
the series of letters comprised in Swift's Journal to 
Stella. Esther Johnson was a young woman in the 
Temple household, almost a child when Swift was filling 



THE JOURNAL TO STELLA 243 



his position of secretary to Sir William. He had di- 
rected her studies at that time ; although many years 
his junior, her personality had greatly attracted him, 
and after the death of their common patron their inti- 
macy continued. The relations between this bright, 
talented girl and the brilliant, imperious genius to whom 
she was devoted are not fully known. There is a tra- 
dition that they were married, but there is no evidence 
of such an event, which is unlikely. Of their mutual 
affection there is no doubt. It throws a softer light 
upon the inner life of this singular man to know that 
after his death there was found among his papers a 
little package inscribed " only a woman's hair ; " the 
lock thus treasured was Stella's. 

The correspondence itself is an actual diary of Swift's 
life during the years 1610-13 ; and in these letters an 
entirely new phase of his personality is shown. Not 
only are the daily experiences, trivial as well as notable, 
vividly recounted ; the meetings with prominent per- 
sons, the intercourse with great men of which he was 
so proud ; the influence he exerted, the flattery paid to 
his own talents, the gossip of coffee-house and club, of 
cabinet and parlor : not only does he draw deft por- 
traitures of all the great lions, — than whom none roars 
more impressively than the great Dean himself, — but 
here Swift lays aside, for the only time in his career 
as a writer, the mask of mockery which he assumes in 
every other public expression of his thought. In play- 
ful, affectionate terms he writes to this woman as a 
parent might write to a child, using the " little lan- 
guage " of a jocular tenderness which employs abbrevi- 
ations and resorts to a cipher code. This Journal gives 
us an invaluable reproduction of the men and manners 
of that age ; it also gives us almost our only glimpse of 
the real heart of Jonathan Swift. 



244 FROM ADDISOJ^ TO BURNS 



After his return to Ireland in 1714, the Dean in- 
TheDrapier terested himself more and more in Irish 
Letters. affairs, and not infrequently expressed his 
mind in some vigorous tract, always anonymously and 
almost always with that terrible irony so characteristic 
of his style that his identity was easily guessed. The 
most notable of the Irish papers are The Drapier Let- 
ters^ published in 1724. This series of papers was in- 
spired by an act of Government licensing an English 
speculator to coin copper half-pence for circulation in 
Ireland, where coins of small denomination were much 
needed in trade. The terms of the patent sanctioned 
what seemed to be a gross robbery of the Irish people, 
and aroused an indignant resistance. In the midst of 
the transaction Swift, anonymously, published these 
pamphlets, signed " M. B., drapier," and addressed to 
" the tradesmen, shopkeepers, farmers, and country peo- 
ple in general of the kingdom of Ireland." Shrewdly 
impersonating the character of a plain Dublin draper, 
the author assailed the scheme, arguing the ruin of 
Ireland if the plan were adopted. There were four of 
the letters, and their effect was immediate. Not only 
did the Government recall the contract, but Swift him- 
self, when identified as the writer of the Letters^ be- 
came a popular hero among the Irish people. 

It is as the author of Gulliver that Jonathan Swift 
Gulliver's is best known to the world, — a work so sin- 
Travels, gular in its purpose and so distinct in literary 
method that it stands by itself in literature, like the 
Utopia of Sir Thomas More and the Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress of John Bunyan. The Travels consists of the 
narrative of Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then 
a captain of several ships, who, in four remarkable 
voyages, discovers the island-empire of Lilliput, the 
country of the Brobdingnagians, the flying kingdom of 



GULLIVER'S TRAVELS 



245 



Lapiita, and the disagreeable land of the Houyhnhnms.^ 
The first of these narratives is exceedingly amusing ; 
here the discoverer sojourns among the little people, 
who attain a stature of six inches ; their houses, furni- 
ture, domestic animals, forests, fruits, and grains are 
all in due proportion to the size of the inhabitants. In 
the land of Brobdingnag these proportions are exactly 
reversed ; the grass grows twenty feet in height, the 
hedges are at least one hundred and twenty feet tall, 
while the trees are too lofty to be measured. Here 
Gulliver, the man-mountain, as the Lilliputians termed 
him, is studied like an insect by his new captors, with 
the aid of a magnifying glass. In the third voyage the 
satire grows more pointed. The court of Laputa is 
composed of musicians and scientists, who live wholly 
in the air ; their feet never touch the earth, their heads 
are in the clouds, and naturally, their minds are usually 
befogged. Adepts in music and mathematics, they par- 
ticipate in the harmony of the spheres and express 
their ideas in lines and figures. Their tailors take 
their measure by quadrant and compasses, but as mis- 
takes are frequent, their clothes are ill-made and fit 
poorly. In their royal university of Lagado philoso- 
phers are at work on all manner of absurd problems : 
one is engaged in extracting sunbeams from cucumbers ; 
another is designing a method for building houses by 
first constructing the roof ; the projector of specula- 
tive learning is busy with a device for compiling a 
complete body of all arts and sciences, through the 
means of a machine which shifts about a great number 
of little blocks, each inscribed with a single word,^ and 
is operated by turning a crank. It is, however, in the 
fourth and final section of his work that Swift's satire 

^ This apparently unpronounceable name is suggested by the whinny 
of the horse and is pronounced whinnems. 



246 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



finds its most savage and virulent expression. The last 
voyage discovers a land where the horses are endowed 
with reason, while the Yahoos, a race of repulsive 
creatures resembling human beings in form, are char- 
acterized by the most degrading and disgusting traits 
conceivable in brutes. Here the cynicism and misan- 
thropy of the satire are overwhelming. The experi- 
ences of Gulliver among the tiny Lilliputians, and his 
adventures among the good-natured giants of Brob- 
dingnag, may be read with amusement ; the observations 
chronicled upon the unpractical philosophers of Laputa 
and Lagado provoke our admiration through the very 
sharpness of their caustic yet truthful touch : but this 
last narrative is intolerable. It gives a fresh signifi- 
cance to a line in one of Swift's letters to Pope — " but 
principally I hate and detest that animal called man ! '* 
And yet such is the smoothness of his diction and the 
marvelous realism of his fiction, that Swift's Gulliver 
has for generations been the delight of children, who 
have found in the rich imagination of the story all the 
fascination of a fairy tale. 

While we give such prominence to the satires of 
The Spirit Swift, we must not forget what an important 
of the place was filled by the satire in the literature 
of that age. If Dean Swift was the greatest 
of the satirists, all of his contemporaries in letters were 
satirists each in his degree. Two writers of the Resto- 
ration period, Butler and Dryden, had not only estab- 
lished their fame by the use of satire in their verse, 
but they had also established that form of literature in 
popular favor. The influence of literary fashions in 
France, and the revival of interest in the Latin classics, 
confirmed this popularity among scholars of all depart- 
ments ; both prose writers and writers of verse were 
devoted to the composition of satires, and the spirit of 



LAST YEARS 247 

the time found no more characteristic expression than 
through this form of literary art. 

Just before leaving England to enter upon his duties 
as Dean of St. Patrick's, Swift had joined with three 
distinguished contemporaries, Alexander Pope, John 
Gay, and John Arbuthnot, in an agreement to produce 
a series of satires upon the follies of men. This was 
the genesis of the Scriblerus Club, and Arbuthnot's 
once famous work. The Memoirs of Martinus Scrih- 
Zems, was one outcome of this undertaking. Pope's 
£Jpistles and Swift's Gulliver were at least in keeping 
with the purpose of this association. 

The end of Swift's story is sad enough. Stella had 
died in 1728, and the shadow of his own in- ^^^^ ^^^^ 
firmity gradually developed until his once 
brilliant mind was hopelessly clouded. " It is time for 
me to have done with the world," he wrote to Boling- 
broke ; " and so I would, if I could, get into a better 
before I was called into the best, and not die here in a 
rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole." There were pe- 
riods when he was violently insane ; at other times he 
appeared sunk in a state of lethargy. He died October 
19, 1745, and was buried in his own cathedral church 
of St. Patrick's, where, in accordance with his request, 
his body was placed by the side of Stella. His fortune, 
amounting to =£12,000, he bequeathed to establish an 
asylum for the insane ; and upon this foundation St. 
Patrick's Hospital was opened in 1757. 

" An immense genius," says Thackeray; "an awful down- 
fall and ruin. So great a man he seems to me, that think- 
ing of him is like thinking of an empire falling. We have 
other great names to mention — none, I think, however, so 
great or so gloomy." 



Thackeray's picture of Swift's career is perhaps too 



248 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



dark. It was Swift's misfortune to view the world 
cynically ; to observe its follies and its crimes distorted 
to extravagant proportions. It was his weakness that 
he should have devoted his splendid energies to the 
uses of ridicule and scorn rather than to the expression 
of sympathy, encouragement, and faith ; yet it is a su- 
perficial judgment which reports of Jonathan Swift as 
merely the misanthropic censor of his race : the record 
of his literary life is a record of vigorous, outspoken 
defiance against incompetence and sham ; his motives 
are not those of a petty quarrelsome nature ; they are, 
for the most part, inspired by the discovery of some 
abuse, or the threatened injustice of a tyrannous power. 
If he appears inordinately ambitious for influence, it 
was to wield it for others' good, not to possess it for 
himself. 

Read Thackeray on Swifts in English Humourists, and 
Bltllogra- Johnson's Life in his Lives of the Poets. Leslie 
P^y- Stephen is the author of the biography in the 

English Men of Letters Series. Henry Morley has edited 
an excellent edition of Gulliuer's Travels in the Carishrooke 
Library (Routledge, London). Another volume of this 
Library includes a number of the minor writings. The Tale 
of a Tub is given entire, together with other essays, in a vol- 
ume of the Camelot Series (W. Scott, London). Selections 
from Swift, edited by F. C. Prescott, is published by H. 
Holt, and another volume of selections, edited by C T. Win- 
chester, is published by Ginn and Company. The Little 
Masterpieces Series, edited by Bliss Perry (Doubleday, 
Page and Company), contains a volume of selections from 
characteristic papers. Sir Walter Scott edited the Works 
of Swift, together with a valuable Memoir. The Prose 
Works have been edited recently by Temple Scott (George 
Bell, London). 



ALEXANDER POPE 



249 



n. THE POETRY OF ALEXANDER POPE. 

The great representative poet in this age of prose 

was Alexander Pope. He was the les^itimate 

r-i^ 1 c 1 ' ! • • Alexander 

successor or Dryden, for whom his admiration Pope, 

was intense even as a child, and whose pol- ^^^8" ^7*'** 
ished form of composition, developed to a wonderful 
perfection, Pope made the model of English verse for 
more than half a century. While incapable of great 
variety in either the spirit or the expression of ideas, 
his mind was extraordinarily brilliant in its aptness for 
epigram and in its use of satire, the inevitable instru- 
ment of literary genius in his day. It is no less char- 
acteristic of his time than of his own peculiar talents 
that Pope's most distinctive works are didactic compo- 
sitions entitled Essays^ or satirical poems upon man- 
ners, morals, and literary themes. He rarely intro- 
duced any other metre than that of the heroic couplet, 
which he handled with a facile art which makes him 
the undisputed master of that particular verse form. 
No other English writer except Shakespeare has pro- 
duced so many lines which have found a permanent and 
familiar place in our literature. Yet Pope's defects 
are as notable as his excellences. He has no true per- 
ception of the realities of nature, no power to paint her 
beauty or her grandeur, much less to interpret her 
teaching or her mysteries ; he never rises to the heights 
of human passion ; he brings no message of profound 
importance to the world. Like his great contempora- 
ries in prose he ridicules the stupidity of men and spec- 
ulates in philosophy and ethics. Pope's place in litera- 
ture is, however, one of high distinction ; he adequately 
voiced the mind of his age in verse, and as a represent- 
ative of the purely literary life he is the most com- 
manding figure not only of his age, but of the entire 
century. 



250 FEOM ADDISON TO BURNS 



Alexander Pope was born in London, May 21, 1688. 
His Boy- father, a wealthy linen draper, was a 

hood. Catholic, and, in common with the followers 
of that creed, suffered from the intolerance of the time. 
Owing to the bitter feeling engendered by the Revolu- 
tion, and childish fears of Jacobite uprisings, Catholics 
were subjected to great annoyance and deprived of 
many natural privileges and rights. Their children 
were not admitted to the public schools. The poet's 
training was unsystematic ; he studied with various 
tutors, but mainly by himself. He was a precocious 
child, and at a very tender age showed some ability in 
making verse. His own words are : — 

" While yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." 

Homer and Ovid were his delight, although he knew 
these classics better through translations than in the 
original. The English poets Waller and Spenser, 
above all Dryden, especially impressed him. Before 
he was fifteen years of age he undertook to write an 
epic poem with the title of Alcander, Prince of 
Ithodes^ of which one couplet remains extant : — 

" Shields, helms, and swords all jangle as they hang-, 
And sound formidinous with angry clang." 

In the year following the poet's birth his father had 
removed to Binfield, a small town not far from Wind- 
sor and on the border of the famous forest ; here the 
poet's childhood was passed, except for a period of two 
or three years when he was sent to London to study 
French. It was at this time, when he was perhaps ten 
years old, that Pope got his glimpse of the great Mr. 
Dryden. Vergilium tantum vidi he wrote in his re- 
cord of that memorable day when, at his own importu- 
nate request, he was taken by some friend to Will's 
Coffee-House, and gazed at the first poet of the time as 



EARLY POEMS 



251 



he sat in his accustomed chair. It was not long after- 
ward that William Walsh, a critic of some authority, 
gave the young verse maker his famous word of coun- 
sel. " Be correct," said he ; " we have had great poets, 
but never one great poet that was correct." 

Pope's earliest productions worthy of note are his 
Pastorals, published in 1709, but written, Early 
according to Lis own account, when he was Poems, 
only sixteen years old. These compositions may be re- 
garded as the exercises of a schoolboy practicing the 
metrical art, but they prove the possession of unusual 
gifts. The classical spirit dominates ; they are eclogues 
after the Vergilian model. They are four in number, 
one for each of the four seasons, and suggest the influ- 
ence of Spenser, whose Shepherd's Calendar they 
somewhat resemble. 

The poem Windsor Forest, the direct product of 
the young poet's environment, appeared in 1713. Here 
again the machinery is altogether classical. 

" Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight, 
Tho' Gods assembled grace his towering height, 
Than what more humble mountains offer here. 
Where, in their blessings, all those Gods appear. 
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown'd, 
Here blushing Flora paints th' enamel'd ground, 
Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand, 
And nodding, tempt the joyful reaper's hand ; 
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains. 
And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns." 

Such a mingling of Roman mythology with modern 
English history cannot fail to be incongruous, but its 
absurdity was not generally felt in Pope's era. So 
Diana with her buskin ed nymphs is allowed to stray 
unchallenged over the dewy lawns of Windsor ; the 
Muses sport on Cooper's Hill ; great Scipio, Atticus, 
and Sir William Trumbull are celebrated impartially 
in the same couplet. 



252 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



Of more distinguished merit than these poems is the 
The Essay ^^^^V Criticism^ which falls chronologi- 
on Criti- cally between the compositions just described. 

It was written when Pope was but twenty-one, 
and published in 1711. In this brilliantly phrased 
Essay Pope covers, superficially, the entire field of 
contemporary criticism. He offers nothing new ; there 
is no particular originality in the thought. His ma- 
terial is absorbed largely from the writings of Boileau 
and Bossu, representing the canons of French taste 
which had been accepted by Dry den and his school. 
These doctrines are reenunciated by Pope, combined 
with the common truisms of literary art. In the 
phrasing and the form which he gave to these ideas, 
however, there was a freshness and finish, a wonderful 
aptness and brilliancy of style which were entirely 
novel and remarkably impressive. On all sides the 
work was praised. The French critics conceded that 
at last a composition of merit had been produced by 
an English writer; and Pope was welcomed by his 
contemporaries as a rising genius. The diction of this 
poem is especially admirable for its terseness and ele- 
gance ; the compact form of the couplet lends itself 
easily to epigram, and Pope's witty lines, sometimes 
singly, sometimes in pairs, quickly found a place in the 
literature of familiar quotation. 

" Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do." 
" For fools rush in where ang-els fear to tread." 
" To err is human, to forgive divine." 
" A little learning is a dangerous thing ; 
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring." 

Such passages, lavishly scattered through this essay, 
illustrate the choice use of words, the strong antithe- 
sis, and the generally epigrammatic character of Pope's 
distinctive style. 



THE RAPE OF THE LOCK 



253 



The serious teaching of the poem is that nature is the 
only standard by which to judge an author's work : — 

" First follow Nature and your judgment frame 
By her just standard, which is still the same." 

But^ says the poet, study nature as interpreted by the 
rules of classic art : — 

" Those rules of old discovered, not devised. 
Are Nature still, but Nature methodised. 

Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites, 
When to repress and when indulge her flights. 

Be Homer's works your study and delight 
Read them by day, and meditate by night ; 
Thence form your judgment, your maxims bring, 
And trace the Muses upward to their spring." 

This is a fair expression of Pope's artistic creed ; he 
followed it consistently to the end, and in his devotion 
to the classic model — which, unfortunately, he viewed 
not directly, but through translation — he imposed upon 
English poetry qualities which justify the use of the 
epithet artificial^ now generally applied to his own 
work and that of his school. 

In 1714 appeared the Rape of the Loch^ Pope's 
most brilliant achievement during this first trj^guape 
period of his career. This composition is es- of the 
teemed as the finest example of the mock- 
heroic in English verse — a humorous epic, half satire, 
half burlesque. The basis of the poem is an adventure 
of trivial character: a young nobleman. Lord Petre, 
had given offense to a Miss Fermor by stealing a lock 
of her hair ; and out of this lover's quarrel developed 
Pope's sparkling verse. No more vivacious trifle ex- 
ists in literature ; wit, fancy, elegant diction, have here 
wrought to produce a masterpiece of the airiest type — 
" the most exquisite specimen of filigree work ever in- 



254 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



vented." ^ No better example of the artificial style 
can be found tban in this poem as a whole. Coffee is 
prepared for the entertainment of guests, and thus does 
Pope describe the process of its preparation : — 

" For lo, the Board with cups and spoons is crowned, 
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; 
On shining altars of Japan they raise 
The silver lamp ; the fairy spirits blaze ; 
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
While China's earth receives the smoking tide." 

Thfe climax of humorous fancy is reached in the ac- 
count of the actual clipping of the lock and the disas- 
ter which befalls an attendant sylph who tries in vain 
to defend the heroine from loss. 

Two other compositions of this period, the Elegy to 
the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the Epistle 
ofEloise to Ahelard (1717), have been classed justly as 
rhetorical poems.^ In the one last named Pope came 
as near as was possible for him to the expression of 
human passion ; but his deficiencies in this field are 
painfully evident. Passion of any kind lay outside the 
experience of this generation, and literary talent of the 
age made little attempt to reach its heights ; when 
Pope aspired to be dramatic, he produced only fervid 
declamation. 

In the early part of 1713 the poet first met Jonathan 
Pope's Swift, and a friendship was begun which, un- 
Transiation like most of Pope's friendships with contem- 
oi Homer. pQ^^ry men of letters, was unmarred by petty 
quarrels, and continued unbroken till the death of the 
poet in 1744. There is an interesting account by 
Bishop Kennett which describes a scene in the ante- 
chamber of a Secretary of State. The room is crowded 
with men of note who are waiting for an audience. 
1 William Hazlitt. 2 Leslie Stephen. 



POPE'S TRANSLATION OF HOMER 255 



The great satirist is the most conspicuous figure, bus- 
tling about, imparting advice, promising assistance to 
this and that cause, whispering in the ear of one great 
man, browbeating another ; all at once he is heard to 
declare that the greatest poet in England, Mr. Pope, a 
Papist, has begun a translation of Homer, for which 
subscriptions must be forthcoming ; " for," says he, 
" the author shall not begin to print till I have a thou- 
sand guineas for him." The first volume of Pope's 
Iliad appeared in 1715, the sixth and last volume in 
1720. This translation of the Iliad is commonly re- 
garded as Pope's greatest work, but its merit does 
not lie in its faithfulness to the original ; many of 
Pope's contemporaries conceded that. Richard Bentley, 
scholar and writer, declared in a phrase much quoted, 
that it is " a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not 
call it Homer." Although the spirit of the Greek poet 
is absent in Pope's version of the epic, the transla- 
tion is, nevertheless, a masterpiece ; one critic ^ cites 
the following passage as unsurpassed for finished ver- 
sification in English poetry : — 

" The troops exulting", sat in order round, 
And beaming fires illumined all the ground. 
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night. 
O'er Heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, 
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, 
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; 
Around her throne the vivid planets roll. 
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole. 
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
And tip with silver every mountain's head." 

In this description Pope rises to his highest reach of 
power ; but, truly, his verses are not Homer. 

Strangely enough for one attempting such a task, 
Pope was practically ignorant of Greek. His " trans- 

1 Mark Pattison. 



256 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



lation " is based entirely on other renderings, French 
and English. When he undertook the Odyssey^ the 
poet secured the assistance of two Cambridge scholars, 
Browne and Fenton, who performed at least half the 
work. So artificial, indeed so mechanical, is the style 
of Pope that these minor writers were able to imitate 
his versification perfectly. There is no better evidence 
than this of the truth expressed in Cowper's couplet 
upon the poets of his time, who 

" made poetry a mere mechanic art, 
And every warbler had his tune by heart." 

Since the year 1718 the poet had been living at 
Twickon- Twickenham, a pleasant country town upon 
the Thames, not many miles from London. 
Here he occupied the villa made famous by his resi- 
dence, diverted himself with his garden and his grotto, 
surrounded by that curious combination of nature and 
art so attractive to eighteenth century taste. Here 
Pope entertained many distinguished guests; for he 
was now recognized as the first of living poets, and 
honored by persons of distinction in all fields. Alone 
among his contemporaries, he gave himself wholly to 
the vocation of letters. The French philosopher Vol- 
taire paid him a visit. Henry St. John, Lord Boling- 
broke, whom Pope addressed affectionately as " guide, 
philosopher, and friend," was for a time his neighbor, 
and a frequent guest. So too were Thomson, the poet 
of The Seasons, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague, 
the most brilliant woman of that day. But Pope quar- 
reled outrageously with Lady Mary, after having ad- 
dressed her in most ridiculous strains of gallantry, and 
in reply to some coarse and insulting epigrams was 
described as the " wicked little wasp of Twickenham," 
— an epithet which was upon occasion well deserved. 



THE DUNCIAD 



257 



There were many littlenesses in the personality of 
Pope : his frail body was full of fret ; he was suspi- 
cious, jealous, and irritable. So full of tricks and 
falsehoods was he that one of his friends a£fi.rmed that 
he never took tea without a stratagem. The littleness 
and greatness of Pope appear equally in his next im- 
portant work. The Dunciad. 

This famous satire had its genesis in that association 
of clever writers who composed the Scrib- The 
lerus Club, the inspiration likewise of Swift's Dunciad. 
Gulliver^ as well as of the less known satires of Ar- 
buthnot, Atterbury, Gay, and Parnell. Swift and 
Pope, it is needless to say, were the dominant spirits 
of the coterie. Gulliver's Travels appeared in 1726, 
and in 1728 Pope published The Dunciad. Originally 
in three books, it was afterward revised and republished 
with an additional book in 1742. 

The immediate plan of the satire follows that of 
Dryden's MacFlechnoe. Its serious purpose is to 
make war upon the dunces ; and with all the flash and 
polish of his most brilliant style. Pope here pillories 
the mob of minor poets, critics, and romancers of 
his day. He has given immortality to some names 
that had better been ignored, and incidentally has 
stooped to the abuse of writers whose only fault was to 
have offended Pope. With Addison, Pope had quar- 
reled, over some imagined injury, years before ; the 
essayist had been dead ten years when The Dunciad 
was published ; yet the old resentment finds expression 
in lines cruelly unjust to the memory of one who had 
befriended the poet in his youth, and whose character 
was happily beyond the reach of such attacks. There 
is something ludicrous in this spectacle of genius em- 
ploying its greatest powers to square off some petty 
quarrel. The second publication of The Dunciad af- 



258 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



forded an opportunity to settle more accounts. The 
original hero of the epic had been Lewis Theobald, 
who had incurred the enmity of the poet by his rigor- 
ous criticism of Pope's attempt to edit Shakespeare in 
1725 ; but another character was enthroned as hero in 
the edition of 1742, Colley Gibber, the most popular 
actor and dramatist of the age, whose principal offense 
was that in 1730 he had received the honors of poet- 
laureate, an office for which he had no qualifications, 
and which brought only injury to his fame. Every 
writer with whom Pope had ever had a tilt was merci- 
lessly lampooned in this epic of Duncedom. At first 
only the initials of the luckless authors were inserted, 
but afterward the names appeared in full, and foot- 
notes were added which were often libelous in their 
assertions. No better essay in the gentle art of making 
enemies was ever devised than The Dunciad ; and it 
was characteristic of its author that he took pains by 
flattery and craft to forestall retaliation by resort to 
law. Three prominent peers were prevailed upon to 
act as nominal publishers of the work ; the king and 
queen were publicly presented with copies, and the 
report was circulated that the satire was issued under 
the patronage of these distinguished personages. 

The Dunciad is a stronger work than Dryden's 
MacFlechioe^ but it does not approach in dignity or 
force the great political satire of Absalom and Achito- 
phel. It is pungent and polished ; it is also abusive 
and malicious. Although it is common to refer the 
spirit and tone of this satire to the influence of Jona- 
than Swift, it is impossible thus to excuse the virulence 
and coarseness, the petty personalities and rank injus- 
tice that inevitably mar this work. Its merit as litera- 
ture depends upon passages which are remarkable for 
their skill in characterization, and upon that terse and 



THE MORAL ESSAYS 



259 



finished style which gives distinction to all of Pope's 
composition. 

The best work of Pope's third period, the work of 
his later years, is in the Moral Ussays, of The Moral 
which the Essay on Man is most conspicu- Essays, 
ous. The poet was now strongly influenced by his friend 
Bolingbroke, the brilliant politician and former Secre- 
tary of State, who posed also as a moralist and philoso- 
pher, although insincere in his professions of morality 
and superficial in thought. Of Bolingbroke's philoso- 
phy, however. Pope was a professed admirer, and it 
was this philosophy which the poet strove to embody in 
his Essay on Man. The plan of the work as a whole 
was ambitious and worthy of even greater genius than 
that of Pope. It was no less than to develop a system 
of morals dealing with man in various relations, social, 
political, and religious. Unhappily, the defects of his 
own uncertain logic betrayed Pope into inconsistencies 
and falsities. Even Bolingbroke remarked that the 
author of the Essay was " a very great wit and a very 
indifferent philosopher." The result of the poet's rea- 
soning brought him to the statement of blank panthe- 
ism : — 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul." 

The central thesis of the poem, " Whatever is, is right," 
admits of altogether too general application for any 
but the most radical philosophy ; and Pope was far 
from occupying the position into which his real igno- 
rance of any system had betrayed him. When stig- 
matized for his heterodoxy, he was alarmed and inex- 
pressibly shocked to find his poem eulogized by Voltaire 
and applauded by the atheistical leaders in France. 
The Essay had appeared complete in 1734, and in 
1738 Pope published his Universal Prayer to modify 



260 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



the impressions produced so generally by his unsuccess- 
ful effort to 

" vindicate the ways of God to man." 

In spite of its errors, however, the Essay on Man is 
an impressive composition. Again the poet displays 
his consummate art in phrase and verse, the deft use 
of language that rivets the inevitable word in its place 
and turns a couplet or a single line into an epigram as 
enduring as literature itself. 

" Honor and shame from no condition rise ; 
Act well your part : there all the honor lies." 

" For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; 
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 

*' Vice is a monster of so frightful mien 
As to be hated needs but to be seen : 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace." 

" Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is man." 

To be sure. Pope's treasury of wit includes little 
more than the commonplace truisms of the race ; he 
acknowledged as much in a familiar couplet, and was 
content to give them a form which might impress their 
truthfulness on the minds of men.^ 

Pope's other works included satires, translations, 
Minor imitations, with occasional poems which 

Poems. (Jo not call for special notice. Like Dryden, 
he modernized two or three of the Canterbury Tales^ 
but was wise enough to refrain from the attempt, sug- 
gested by a friend in the Scriblerus Club, to " civilize " 
the Samson Agonistes, 

^ " True wit is nature to advantage dressed ; 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." 

Essay on Criticism. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



261 



In 1744 there came the end to that life which was 
" one lonof disease." Whatever may be the „^ ^ 

His DsEtlL 

feelings excited by those perversities of dis- 
position, the ill-temper, the falsehood, the treachery, of 
this peculiar character. Pope always commands admira- 
tion for his persevering industry and brave resistance 
to racking pain. Johnson tells us that the poet suf- 
fered cruelly from headache ; that his frail, deformed 
body could hardly be kept erect without the aid of a 
stiff canvas bodice into which he was laced every 
morning ; that he could not dress or undress without 
assistance. In condemning the unnaturalness and af- 
fectation of Pope's literary style, it must be remembered 
that this was the common fault of the artificial period 
in which he lived. His contemporaries acknowledged 
his supremacy. Addison and Swift placed him among 
the peers of song. In vivid portraiture, in grace and 
elegance of diction, in the " happiness " of phrase, 
which distinguishes the masters of wit, in the terse 
vigor of his couplets, the correctness of his verse, in all 
those qualities which give distinction to poetry of the 
second rank, Pope is preeminent; upon this level of 
his art he leads. In the progress of English poetry it 
was no misfortune that it should receive the impress 
that came from the work of Alexander Pope. 

The Globe Edition of Pope's Poetical Works (Macmil- 
lan) is the best for students' use. The Intro- Suggestions 
ductory Memoir by the editor, Mr. A. W. Ward, 
should be carefully read. A good volume of Selections from 
the poet's works is edited with notes by E. B. Reed (Holt). 
Leshe Stephen's Pope, in the English Men of Letters Series, 
and W. J. Courthope's Biograjjhy of the poet are authori- 
tative. Dr. Johnson included Pope in his Lives of the 
Poets, and there are notable essays upon Pope by Thackeray, 
in his English Humourists, Lowell, in My Study Windows, 



262 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



and De Qulncey, in the Biographical Essays. All the promi- 
nent writers on eighteenth century literature have discoursed 
upon Pope. 

For special study the student may best select the poem 
Windsor Forest, the vivacious Rape of the Lock, the Essay 
on Criticism, and the Essay on Man. The peculiarities of 
Pope's personality, the theories and conception of his art, 
held by him and by the writers generally of that age, his 
own methods of versification, the dash and polish of his 
style, together with its limitations and its defects, will hardly 
escape the observant reader. The reiteration of Pope's 
only metrical form, the heroic couplet, will impress that 
structure upon the memory as the characteristic verse form 
of the Augustan age. 

I. Windsor Forest. As this is largely a " nature " poem, 
study its descriptive parts. How does Pope see nature, and 
what points does he emphasize in description ? Recall the 
studies of Chaucer and Spenser, and compare the natural- 
ness and realism of their pictures with those of Pope. Con- 
sider the " pastoral " element in this poem ; read Pope's 
Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, prefixed to his earlier poems. 
As you note the incongruities of this composition, note also 
passages which contain poetic beauty. What is the plan of 
the poem as a whole ? 

II. The Rape of the Lock. This poem is to be read, 
of course, in the spirit of the burlesque which it is, — a form 
of composition then in great favor. Recall the success of 
Butler's Hudihras (1663) and Swift's Battle of the Books 
(1704). Many interesting hints of contemporary manners 
and social usage may be gathered from the poem ; the de- 
scription of the belle's toilette and the account of the game 
at cards are especially vivacious, as well as humorous pic- 
tures of the time. Are there not also passages of real satire 
in the work ? What is the tone of the poet's comments upon 
woman ? Miss Fermor, the heroine of the piece, was heart- 
ily out of temper with the poet because of his portraiture : 
was she justified ? In its earlier form the poem did not con- 
tain the parts which introduce the sylphs and gnomes ; this 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 203 



was an afterthought of the poet. Consider how much of the 
wit and elegance of this humorous masterpiece is due to their 
airy presence. Whence did Pope get this idea ? 

III. Essay on Criticism. It would be well to outline 
the parts of this essay. What is the general topic considered 
in the first fifty lines ? Note the important place assigned to 
nature in establishing the standards of criticism ; then note 
how her principles and laws are to be interpreted (lines 88— 
89). Consider the influence of the classic on Pope's thought. 
What ancient poets does he propose as models ? Where is 
the error in Pope's theory (lines 139-140) ? What force is 
there in his next suggestion (lines 152-153) ? He is still 
speaking of the ancients : see how he tempers his statement 
(lines 163-166). In part II. the poet warns the critics 
against particular faults : what are the errors thus enumer- 
ated ? In what sense does he use the term conceit (line 289), 
the word numbers (line 337), and why? Throughout the 
poem the word luit is frequently used in varying senses (as 
in lines 17, 28, 36, 53, 61, 80, 297); compare these lines and 
indicate the meaning which the poet intends the word to 
have in these places ; what is the etymology and original 
meaning of luit ? Point out such marked illustrations of 
Pope's happiness in epigram as are found in this poem. 
Study the passage (lines 337-383) in which the poet has 
tried to express something of the sense of his verse through 
its effect upon the ear ; see especially lines 357, 369-373. 
Occasionally Pope breaks the monotony of the couplet by 
adding a third rhyme, as in lines 23-25 ; where else do you 
discover this ? The pronunciation of that period will account 
for some of Pope's peculiar rhymes, as no7ie : oivn (lines 9, 
10) ; joined: mankind (lines 186, 187) ; but defective lines 
may be found, and also constructions which are grammati- 
cally defective, as in the couplet (lines 9-10) 

" 'T is -with OUT jnclg-ments as our watches, none 
Go just alike, yet each believes his own." 

lY. Essay ox Max. Follow a course similar to that 
suggested in the study of the last poem. The Arguments 



264 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



prefixed to the Epistles will help in the analysis. Why did 
Pope address this work to Lord Bolingbroke ? Look up the 
record of Bolingbroke's career and find out the facts of his 
political and literary achievements. 



Of the numerous minor poets who followed Pope in 
^j^g his use of the couplet, and who exhibited the 

"School" characteristics of the artificial school, the fol- 
oiPope. lowing are the most prominent. Matthew 
Prior (1664-1721) was a poor boy in Dorsetshire 
when discovered by the Earl of Dorset reading Horace 
behind a tavern bar. By the generosity of that noble- 
man he was sent to Cambridge. Later he entered poli- 
tics, became Secretary of State for Ireland, and finally 
Ambassador to France. With Pope and Swift he joined 
in the project of the Scriblerus Club and wrote satirical 
poems and tales. John Gay (1685-1732), a member 
of the same distinguished group, was especially noted 
for his Beggar's Opera (1728), conceived also with 
satire as its intent. His Shepherd's Week (1714) 
consists of six burlesque pastorals. Trivia (1715) is 
a satire upon city life. The work of Edward Young 
(1684-1765) was of a more serious sort. He com- 
posed three tragedies : Busirus (1719), The Revenge 
(1721), The Brothers (1728) ; but he is best known 
as the author of Night Thoughts (1742-45), nine books 
of prosy moralizing, much esteemed by his generation. 
The Grave^ a serious didactic poem of 800 lines by 
Kobert Blair, a Scotch poet, is of much greater value, 
but shows the same quality of tone.^ In the poetry of 
James James Thomson, however, another key is 
Thomson, struck. A real appreciation of nature gives 
1700-48. distinction to his Seasons, — four long poems 
in blank verse. It is refreshing to find even within 
1 See page 304. 



THE RISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 265 



tbe lifetime of Pope a spirit of simple pleasure in the 
naturalness of nature, such as is conveyed in these lines 
from Thomson's Siunmer : — 

" Hence, let me haste into the mid-wood shade, 
Where scarce a sunbeam wanders through the gloom ; 
And on the dark-green grass, beside the brink 
Of haunted stream, that by the roots of oak 
Rolls o'er the rocky channel, lie at large, 
And sing the glories of the circling year." 

Thomson, like Blair, was a Scotchman ; a graduate 
of Edinburgh, he had come to London and was making 
his living as a tutor when he found a publisher for his 
poem on Winter^ in 1726. That on Summer followed 
in the next year, and Spring was published the year 
after. The poem on Autumn did not appear until 
1730. Thomson wrote several plays and many vigor- 
ous songs, of which Rule Britannia is best known. 
The Castle of Indolence (1748), his last important 
work, is in the old Spenserian stanza, and suggests the 
indolent languor of its theme with consummate effect. 
The charm of nature is always present in the poetry of 
Thomson. Undisturbed by the tastes and influences 
of the artificial school, he pursues his independent 
course, and sounds the note which grows clearer and 
stronger in the latter half of the century, until it reaches 
its fullness of tone in the songs of Robert Burns. 

III. THE KISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL. 

It is customary to date the beginning of the English 
novel at about the middle of the eighteenth century, 
when Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding intro- 
duced, to a large and delighted circle of English read- 
ers, what appeared to be a distinctly new form of 
literary creation. But the essential quality in all works 
of fiction is the story, and it is to a far earlier period 



266 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



than this that we must look for origins in this depart- 
ment of literature. 

The love of the story is as ancient as the race, and 
The Real the art of story-telling is as old as literature. 
Beginnings, have seen, the spirit of the story-teller 

held undisputed sway in Saxon hall and Norman 
castle, where gleeman and minstrel moved their rough 
audiences at will. The genius of the true story-teller 
lived in Chaucer ; indeed his sketches of the Canter- 
bury pilgrims, and particularly his portraitures of char- 
acter in the metrical romance of Troilus and Criseyde^ 
bring his work in very close relation with the produc- 
tions of the novelists themselves. The prose romances 
of the Elizabethan age, the artificial compositions of 
John Lyly, of Sidney, of Lodge, and of Nash, together 
with the scores of imitations and translations which 
were in vogue at the close of the sixteenth century, 
exhibit comparatively little of that realistic quality 
essential to the novel. The spirit of these narratives 
was' frankly unreal, and the art of the Elizabethan 
romancer was directed. as far as possible away from the 
realities of common experience. The creations of the 
great dramatists were infinitely nearer the life of hu- 
manity. Nature, if she found any interpreter at all, 
spoke not in the romance but in the play. There was, 
however, one development of the fictitious narrative in 
that age which was significant of a new interest in the 
details of real life. This we find in the rogue romance^ 
a natural outgrowth of the older romance of chivalry, 
which had supplied the Spanish and Italian models for 
Sidney's Arcadia and the works of that class. In both 
Spain and Italy these rogue stories were extremely 
popular. The hero of the adventures recounted was 
always a rascal, clever, impudent, immoral ; his career 
was one of intrigue and scandal. The Spanish word 



FORERUNNERS 



267 



picaro (rogue) gave to this group of stories the name 
picaresque; and by this name they are usually de- 
scribed. Numerous translations of Italian novelle had 
made the material familiar to English readers, and the 
romance of roguery became popular in England. 

The Pilgrim s Progress may, in a way, be identified 
by its method with this class of works, how- pore- 
ever widely divergent in spirit and tone. At '^^ers. 
all events, Bunyan's hero, struggling amid the perils 
of the world, was a very real character to the devout 
Puritan who eagerly turned its pages. Many a pious 
reader of that day, with head bent over the record of 
Christian's falls and Christian's triumphs, must have 
whispered softly to himself, while tears rolled down his 
cheeks, " It is I ; it is 1 1 " Hardly more than a step 
was needed to usher in the novel : that was to drop the 
allegory and to describe men and women in the rela- 
tions familiar to us and amid the surrounding^s of the 
world in which we live. Still more significant of the 
coming narrative than even the story of Bunyan's pil- 
grim was the appearance of that genuine character 
from English country life discovered by Steele and 
Addison. Sir Roger de Coverley is one of the per- 
sonalities of English fiction, although the portraiture 
is presented only in a series of sketches, and belongs 
neither to the novel nor the stage. But a real beginning 
in the art of novel writing was made when, in 1719, 
Daniel Defoe published his inimitable narrative, Rob- 
inson Crusoe. 

Defoe was a prominent figure among the busy men 
of letters who, by their intellectual strength jj^^^gj 
and the elaborate elegance of their literary Defoe, 
form, gave character to English literature in ^^^^"^^3^- 
the age of Anne. He was not only contemporary with 
Addison, Steele, and Swift, but was engaged in the 



268 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



same political battles ; his interests were as keen, his 
services perhaps as notable as theirs. Like the rest 
he was a moralist, and although less skillful than they, 
used satire as his weapon. Yet while thus employed, 
sometimes opposing them, sometimes cooperating with 
them, he was never personally of them. By birth and 
inclination Defoe was democratic. His father was a 
butcher, plain J ames Foe, who knew nothing of the pre- 
fix to the family name, which for some shrewd reason 
his son assumed when about forty years of age. Self- 
reliant, courageous, enterprising, inventive, Daniel De- 
foe made the interests of the people his study. In- 
deed he did this often to his own disadvantage, for his 
personal interests were sometimes sacrificed or for- 
gotten, and business failures were frequent incidents 
in his peculiar career. 

Defoe's parents were well-to-do people of the trading 
Personal class, living in London, where he was born in 
Career. 1659 or 1660. Although never in attendance 
at either of the universities, Daniel Defoe received a 
good education at an academy in Newington, then 
under the direction of Charles Morton, " a rank Inde- 
pendent," as his enemies called him, who in 1685 emi- 
grated to America, and eventually became vice-presi- 
dent of Harvard College. Defoe seems to have been 
blessed with an inquisitive mind, and to have been curi- 
ously concerned to elucidate his own theories and correct 
the opinions of others. With astonishing energy he 
threw himself into the active life of his age, won fame 
as a political writer, both in pamphlets and periodicals, 
established one of the first newspapers, the little ^e- 
view^ which he conducted for some eight or nine years, 
moralized in print upon almost every conceivable 
theme, composed ballads and satires, which won the 
hearts of the people, and at sixty years of age made 




RBPRODUCTIOK OF ORIGINAL FRONTISPIECE IN FIRST EDITION 
OF ROBINSON CRUSOE (1719) 



270 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



his name immortal hj writing a story which, if not 
actually the first English novel, still holds its place 
among the finest achievements in English fiction. 

The narrative of Robinson Crusoe is based upon the 
Robinson story of Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch sailor, 
Crusoe. ^j^^ j-^^^^ been abandoned by his comrades on 
the island of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of Chili. 
There he had remained solitary for five weary years, 
although he had succeeded by his skill, and with the 
cooperation of nature, in providing not a few comforts 
in the midst of his solitude. In 1711 he was discovered 
and brought back to England, where his story soon 
became known and attracted much curious attention. 
He remained for a time in Bristol, and thither went 
Daniel Defoe to see him, probably soon after his re- 
turn : at this meeting he secured all of Selkirk's papers. 
At about the same period Kichard Steele interviewed 
Selkirk, and printed an account of the latter's adven- 
tures in his paper Tlie Englisliman. Defoe made no 
use of his material for several years, but, in 1719, pub- 
lished his great story. This volume at once took its 
place by the side of Bunyan's book as one of the peo- 
ple's classics. The publisher cleared XIOOO. Edition 
followed edition. Several spurious abridgments were 
published. A whole literature of adventure followed, 
and, even in Europe, numerous fictitious accounts sug- 
gested by Defoe's narrative enjoyed a continuous suc- 
cess. All classes of readers were fascinated by this 
work. Within four months the book had reached its 
fourth edition, and since the day of its appearance its 
popularity has never waned. " Was there ever any- 
thing written by man," said Dr. Johnson in the next 
generation, " that was wished longer by its readers ex- 
cept Don Quixote, Rohinson Crusoe, and The Pil- 
grMs Progress f " 



OTHER NARRATIVES 



271 



It is important to know the secret of Defoe's power 
as a writer of fiction. Wherein lay the mas- The Realism 
tery that could create such absorbing inter- 
est ? The key to Defoe's success is found in his minute 
attention to detail. He had the ability, as few writers 
have possessed it, to place himself in the situation of 
his characters, to see and think and feel with them. 
Placed thus and thus, he would reason, what should I 
desire and how should I provide ? And so he became 
fertile in expedients. No one can forget the feeling of 
isolation experienced in common with his shipwrecked 
sailor, nor the self -congratulation that follows the safe 
arrival of each necessary article brought from the 
wreck to increase the little store in Crusoe's cabin. 
The critic Minto points out Defoe's discovery that 
narrative should be plain rather than adorned. He 
chose the simplest language at command and thus at- 
tained " the dullness of truth." 

In 1722 Defoe published his Journal of the, Plague. 
Year. He had been but a boy of five when other Nar- 
this dreadful visitation ravaged the city of ratives. 
London, and could have recalled little or nothing of 
that event ; but his account is so minutely circumstan- 
tial and so vivid in its simple, commonplace details, 
that it has been accepted, often, as a genuine diary of 
the time. The Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) is pos- 
sibly an historical work ; it was quoted as history by 
Lord Chatham in Parliament : but it is written in the 
same form of personal biography which we find in De- 
foe's fictions, and, even if based on fact, owes its effect 
to the extraordinary realistic power of its author. Dur- 
ing the five years following the appearance of Crusoe., 
in addition to the two works just named, Defoe pub- 
lished four lengthy narratives remarkable for their real- 
istic power. These were : The Life., Adventures and 



272 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720), 
Moll Flanders (1722), The History of Colonel Jacque 
(1722), and Hoxana (^The Fortunate Mistress) 
(1724). A half dozen minor narratives, including ac- 
counts of the highwayman eJack Sheppard, the French 
criminal Cartouche, and " the Highland Kogue," Rob 
Koy, belong to the same period. As will be readily 
seen, these works represent the picaresque type of lit- 
erature. Moll Flanders is the portraiture of a com- 
mon thief, who escapes from Newgate, is transported to 
America, there reforms, and writes the record of her 
career. Roxana depicts the character of a notorious 
courtesan and is a study of crime in aristocratic circles. 
The hero of Colonel Jacque was born a gentleman, put 
apprentice to a pickpocket, was six and twenty years 
a thief. In people of the criminal class Defoe took a 
curious interest ; his acquaintance with their experi- 
ences, both as rogues and as penitents, probably began 
during his confinement in Newgate as a political offender 
in 1703-4. In all these tales the author appears as a 
rigid moralist, inculcating lessons of warning skimmed 
from the experience of vice. 

" Every wicked reader," runs the preface to Colonel 
Jacque^ " will here be encouraged to a change ; and it will 
appear that the best and only good end of a wicked and mis- 
spent life is repentance." 

This is the burden of Moll Flanders' message ; and 
thus these characters preach to the end. Of all these 
works Moll Flanders is the most realistic ; by some 
critics it is given the highest place in the fiction of 
realism, although in popular interest it cannot compare 
with Defoe's real masterpiece, Rohinson Crusoe. 

Defoe continued active in politics to the last. In 
spite of his literary success his business affairs were 



THE NOVEL 



273 



generally in confusion, and lie was often in sore straits 
because of his creditors. The close of his life is ob- 
scure, but he was in hiding, even from the members of 
his own family, when his death occurred in London, in 
1731. His wonderful activity as a writer is proved by 
the fact that his publications numbered no less than 
250 distinct works. 

Strictly speaking, Defoe's imaginative compositions 
are not novels^ although their material is drawn 
from real life. They are rather narratives of 
adventure, in which the interest is aroused by the succes- 
sion of incidents rather than by any substantial study 
of manners or character. Now the novel as a specific 
art form is distinctively a picture of life in its actual 
experiences, grave or gay, familiar or extraordinary. It 
always includes the presentation of character that is, 
or has been, or might be real. In its highest devel- 
opment the novel proposes a more or less accurate 
study of how cause and effect apply in the moulding of 
character. The novel may exhibit extreme ingenuity 
and dramatic intensity of situation and plot, but it 
must not depend upon these alone for its interest ; and 
there are obvious bounds of probability and taste which 
must not be transgressed. Moreover, it must possess 
artistic form. Starting with a given situation it should 
proceed logically and naturally to its inevitable con- 
clusion, which is developed through the influence of 
character upon character, plus the dominating power 
of incident and fate. The narrative throughout must 
be a unit ; the motive forces should not be so numer- 
ous as to distract attention from the one central idea 
which controls our interest. Unity is for the most 
part secured by deftly weaving the threads of individ- 
ual fortune into a compact strand ; and this is com- 
monly achieved by developing a close interrelation 



274 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



between the subordinate personages and the principal 
personage, the hero or heroine, of the story. There 
should be no episodes or side-trackings in the progress 
of the plot. Incidents should be introduced because 
necessary to the narrative, and so arranged as to stimu- 
late interest as the tale proceeds. The novelist must 
appreciate the laws of climax and dramatic effect. In 
the largest sense of the word, he must be an artist. 
One might go on to say that the novelist needs also to 
be a clear-sighted, clear-brained philosopher ; for how 
otherwise may he assume to hold the mirror up to na- 
ture and say, Behold things as they are ! 

Not all of these requirements, it is true, are met in the 
Samuel works of Samuel Eichardson ; nevertheless, 
son^i689- quality of his work is such that he is 

1761. usually named the first English novelist ; and 
his narrative Pamela^ published in 1740, is accepted 
as the first real English novel. Like Defoe, Richard- 
son belonged to the trading class. He was a printer 
and publisher. He early developed a genius for corre- 
spondence, and there is a familiar story which states 
that he wrote the love letters of two or three young 
women with whom he was intimately acquainted. His 
life is devoid of any public interest until the advent of 
his fiftieth year, when two booksellers proposed to 
Richardson that he should write a little book in the 
form of a series of letters dealing with the affairs of 
daily life. These letters were to serve as models in 
letter writing for those who had not acquired the art. 
Then it was that this sedate printer caught the idea of 
embodying vital interest and practical admonition in 
the execution of the plan. Basing his plot upon the 
adventure of a young woman whose experience had 
come to him through the anecdote of a friend, he wrote 
the story of Pamela^ or Virtue Rewarded. 



RICHARDSON'S LATER NOVELS 275 



Defoe had employed in his stories the machinery of 
a fictitious autobiosrraphy. Richardson fol- 

Pamela. 

lowed the same method, but threw his mate- 
rial into the form of correspondence. Pamela An- 
drews, the heroine of the novel, is left, through the 
death of a good woman who has befriended her, some- 
what in the power of her benefactress's son. This gen- 
tleman, a type of the fashionable man of the world in 
that day, makes various assaults upon the honor of 
the young woman, whose character is exemplary, and 
who successfully repulses his advances, while compelled 
by circumstances to submit to endless persecution. 
Finally, however, Pamela's virtue is " rewarded " by the 
complete conversion of the reprobate, " Mr. B.," and 
the offer of an honorable marriage, which the heroine 
modestly and gratefully accepts. The novel is prolix 
to tediousness ; yet it is marked by some obvious ex- 
cellencies. It shows ingenuity of invention, its action 
is consistent, and there is a close and realistic study of 
details. The story of Pamela aroused an intense in- 
terest, and the novel received enthusiastic welcome. 
Clarissa Harlowe was published in 1748. In this 

novel Richardson describes another contest „. ^ 

Ricnard- 

between vice and virtue. This heroine has to son's Later 
contend against the brutality of her own 
heartless relatives, who insist upon her marriage with 
a man whom she detests ; her trials are intensified by 
the persistent persecution of the profligate Lovelace, 
who represents the type of the cruelly selfish and licen- 
tious man of fashion in that era. Richardson's sym- 
pathy with womanhood was genuine and intelligent ; 
his constant recognition of woman's dignity and rights 
is a conspicuous quality in his works. The novelist 
attempted finally to give to the world his conception 
of the "gentleman;" and in the novel Sir Charles 



276 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



Grandison (1753), he paints " a man of true honor " 
as he understands him. 

" Could he be otherwise than the best of husbands, who 
was the most dutiful of sons ; who is the most affectionate 
of brothers ; the most faithful of friends ; who is good upon 
principle in every relation of life ? " 

Thus exclaims the hero's wife, when, at the comple- 
tion of the story, she too is rewarded for her virtues 
by the bestowal of this paragon upon herself. 

Henry Fielding, contemporary and literary rival of 
Henry Richardson, was a man of very different type. 
Fielding, He was of an aristocratic family, had been 
1707-54. educated at Eton, and had studied law at 
Leyden. He was a writer of comic plays, lived a 
gay, reckless life, and in three years had squandered 
his own and his wife's property. Although admitted 
to the bar in 1740, he was never successful as a lawyer. 
Fielding became a writer to support his family ; he be- 
came a novelist to ridicule the author of Pamela. It 
was natural that Fielding should laugh at Richardson. 
The latter writer, while an apt moralist, was not a 
skillful artist ; with Fielding this comparison was quite 
reversed. He perceived tbat Richardson's characters 
were not natural^ and seized his opportunity. Joseph 
Andrews (1742) was begun as a parody on Pamela. 
In Fielding's story Joseph is presented as the brother 
of Richardson's heroine, and is discovered under cir- 
cumstances similar to those in which the girl was 
placed, with a complete reversal of conditions. Jo- 
seph's master has died, and it is the widow who perse- 
cutes the young man with her attentions. The story 
turns upon Joseph's rejection of her overtures, and the 
various fortunes and misfortunes of the hero until hap- 
pily married to the girl of his own choice. Fortunately 



HENRY FIELDING 



277 



for Fielding's fame as a novelist, he seems quickly to 
have forgotten his first object, that of ridicule, and to 
have become honestly interested in the fortunes of his 
characters. He depicted them with the untrammeled 
freedom and boisterous vigor of his day. The novel is 
coarse if judged by the standards of the present ; but it 
is brimful of nature, and faithfully reflects the spirit 
of English life in the eighteenth century. Fielding had 
discovered his power, and his next novel, Tom Jones 
(1749), surpassed in every point the novel already de- 
scribed. Tom Jones is always placed among the best 
novels ever written ; but it must be judged, morally, by 
the standard of its age. It is marked by the same 
blunt realism which colors Joseph Andrews. The hu- 
mor is coarse, though genuine. The manners depicted 
are usually the had manners of that generation, and 
the " virtues " of the hero are by no means those of 
Sir Charles Grandison. But again Fielding was faith- 
ful to nature in his portraiture. He produced real 
characters. The personality of Squire Western, and 
that of Tom Jones himself, are irresistible, and will 
always remain distinct figures among the great crea- 
tions of English novelists. In Amelia (1751), Field- 
ing's last novel, he presents a portrait of his wife, who 
had died several years before ; some qualities of her 
personality had previously been portrayed in the char- 
acter of Sophia, the heroine of Tom Jones. 

Fielding's part in the development of the realistic 
novel is most important. He started it upon its great 
career. Thoroughly in love with life himself, blessed 
with a keen sense of humor, filled with an excess of 
physical vigor and healthy animal spirit, he had no pa- 
tience with the sentimentalist or the professional moral- 
ist, although he always claimed that his novels, as well 
as his plays, were intended to produce a distinctly moral 



278 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



effect. Theoretically, lie denied that the " hero " ex- 
ists, and made no effort to gloss the defects and vices 
of his characters. 

In the works of Smollett the picaresque quality is 
ToWas again dominant./ This writer was a Scotch 
SmoUett, surgeon, with a taste for adventure, who had 
1721-71. served for four years on one of the king's 
ships. His knowledge of the sea and of the sailor's 
life supplied him material for his most important char- 
acters, all of which belong to the eccentric type. His 
first novel, Roderich Random^ was published in 1748 ; 
Peregrine Pickle (1751), a more vigorous work, is 
disfigured by the immoral character of its hero, but 
presents one of Smollett's most successful portraitures, 
the eccentric character of Commodore Trunnion. 
Other novels followed, including, as the most impor- 
tant, Ferdinand^ Count Fathom (1754), Sir Launce- 
lot Graves (1762), and Humphrey Clinher (1771). 
These all illustrate the literature of roguery, and owe 
more to the influence of the French story-teller Le 
Sage than to Fielding. 

Sterne was an Irishman and an officer in the army ; 
later he entered the Church and became 

Laurence 

Sterne, Prebend of York. The six volumes of his 
1713-68. published sermons, however, are less known 
than his humorous fiction The Life and Opinions of 
Tristram Shandy^ Gentleman, It is impossible to 
describe this whimsical work as a novel, for it is a 
cleverly constructed series of sketches (originally in 
nine volumes) which detail with great accuracy and 
minute circumstance the incidents attending the na- 
tivity of Tristram Shandy ; the hero of the story does 
not appear in his own proper person, except as narrator 
of this unique autobiography. The character painting 
is excellent, the personality of Uncle Toby standing 



THE YICAR OF WAKEFIELD 279 



out above and beyond the rest. Uncle Toby, who still 
suffers with the wound received in the French wars, 
yet so patient of injuries that he would not harm a fly, 
— Uncle Toby, the innocent victim of the wily Widow 
Wadman, — Uncle Toby and his body servant Corporal 
Trim — as much a part of Uncle Toby as is the latter's 
wig or stick, — this amiable, honest, brave, sentimental 
Uncle Toby is one of the best-drawn characters in 
eighteenth century fiction. Sterne completed his story 
but a year before his death. One other work. The 
Sentimental Journey^ is marked by the same peculiar 
qualities which distiuguish Tristram Shandy ; an arti- 
ficial sentiment pervades them both. 

In 1766, when Laurence Sterne was just putting 
final touches upon Tristram Shandy^ there 
stole quietly into the ranks of English fiction Vicarof 
a genuine novel, a book more notable and 
more important, far, than that of Sterne in its influence 
upon modern fiction. This was Goldsmith's clever 
story The Vicar of Wahefield — our first real novel of 
domestic life. " There are an hundred faults in this 
thing," said Goldsmith, with naive shrewdness, in his 
preface ; " but," he added, " a book may be very amus- 
ing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull with- 
out a single absurdity." The novel proved his assertion. 
There is no lack of life interest in this panorama of 
an English home, with its little epic of struggle and 
triumph through the experiences of common life. The 
patient vicar, who endures his share of trouble with 
fortitude and faith, is an attractive figure to novel 
readers still. It is a family record, quietly humorous, 
in its simple routine ; with its sensations and its crises 
also, but without brutality, without indecency, to mar 
the wholesome current of its course. In spite of tech- 
nical faults in the construction of the plot, this book 



280 FE,OM ADDISON TO BURNS 



had a strong influence on subsequent works. In Ger- 
many it produced a great impression upon Goethe and 
his contemporaries. Its appearance really marks an 
epoch in English fiction, for it opened an entirely new 
field to the novelist and supplied a model for what we 
now regard as the best expression of his art. 

For general reference in the historical study of the novel, 
Biblio- Masson's British Novelists and their Styles^ Tuck- 
graphy. erman's History of Prose Fiction, and Dunlop's 
History of Fiction are standard works. The English 
Novel, by Walter Ra^igh (Scribners), and The Develop- 
ment of the English Novel, by Wilbur L. Cross (Macmil- 
lan), are the most helpful of recent books upon this subject. 
The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, by J. J. 
Jusserand (Putnam), is a most interesting discussion of the 
period indicated. The later development is covered in 
William Forsythe's Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth 
Century. Simonds' Introduction to the Study of English 
Fiction (Heath) contains a brief historical review, and also 
illustrative selections from the story-tellers from the time of 
the Anglo-Saxons down to that of Sterne. The Art of 
Fiction, by W. D. Howells, The Novel : What It Is, by 
F. Marion Crawford, and The Experimental Novel, by 
Emile Zola, are interesting essays by the novelists them- 
selves. 

In biography, the student will find lives of Defoe, Fielding, 
Sterne, and Goldsmith in the English Men of Letters Series ; 
of Smollett and Goldsmith in the Great Writers Series, 
H. D. Traill's The New Fiction, and Other Essays contains, 
an essay upon Samuel Richardson, and also one on The 
Novel of Manners. There is a critical study of Richardson 
in Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library. In the September, 
1893, number of the Century Magazine there is an article 
by Mrs. Oliphant upon The Author of Robinson Crusoe ; 
and in Scribner's Magazine for the same date a paper by 
Austin Dobson on Richardson at Home. Sir Walter Scott's 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 



281 



Lives of the Novelists includes sketches of Richardson, Field- 
ing, Smollett, and Sterne. Thackeray's English Humour- 
ists gives a vivacious picture of these men and of their age. 
Saintsbury's Introduction to the Works of Henry Fielding 
and the chapter on Fielding in G. B. Smith's Foets and 
Novelists should be read. There is a life of Smollett by 
David Hannay, and one of Sterne by H. D. Traill. 

lY. ESSAYISTS OF THE SECOND HALF. 
Among English men of letters in the second half of 
the eighteenth century, the dominant figure g^j^^gj 
is that of Samuel Johnson, booksellers' hack, Johnson, 
parliamentary reporter, writer of the Rambler 
and the Idler essays, compiler of the great English 
Dictionary, author of Itasselas and the Lives of Eng- 
lish Poets; observer, moralist, and critic; ponderous, 
sententious, irascible, domineering, honest old Doctor 
Johnson, the dictator in literary art for his generation ; 
less read, perhaps, than any other great writer of that 
century, and yet better known to posterity than any 
other eighteenth century essayist. " The memory of 
other writers," says Macaulay, " is kept alive .by their 
books ; but the memory of Johnson keeps many of his 
books alive." 

Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Stafford- 
shire, where his father, Michael Johnson, was 
a stationer and a dealer in books, well reputed ^"^^ ^*'^* 
for his learning, but eccentric and unlucky in trade. 
Like Pope, Johnson was a frail, sickly child, afflicted 
with St. Vitus's dance and tainted with scrofula. He 
never attained good health ; his huge, overgrown frame 
rolled in his chair, he shuffled and stumbled in his gait, 
he was always troubled with nervous twitchings which 
distorted the muscles of his face, and was subject to 
fits of morbid melancholy which, as he declared, kept 
him mad half his life. The Lichfield bookseller was 



282 FEOM ADDISON TO BUKNS 



hardly in a position to give bis son a university career, 
but the boy learned Latin in the Lichfield school and 
browsed among his father's books. A chance discovery 
of a copy of Plutarch's Lives aroused a passion for 
classical learning ; and, with some assistance, Johnson 
was sent to Oxford in 1729 and entered as a student 
in Pembroke College. At the time of his entrance he 
was distinguished for his familiarity with numerous 
Latin texts not commonly read ; and he soon attracted 
attention by the excellence of his Latin translations. 
Aside from his success in this field his stay at the Uni- 
versity made little impression. In spite of his ability 
he was naturally indolent and withal miserably poor. 
His father's death in 1731 compelled an immediate 
return to Lichfield, and at twenty-two, his education 
half completed, penniless, and diseased, he began the 
long and bitter struggle with circumstance, from which 
he emerged thirty years later the literary leader of his 
age. 

At first Johnson attempted to teach in a private 
school in Leicestershire, but failed on account of his 
peculiarities and physical infirmities. He then tried 
to make a living by translating for the publishers, and 
began his contributions to the magazines. At twenty- 
five he married a Mrs. Porter, widow of a silk mer- 
chant ; the lady was twenty years his senior, but this 
singular experiment appears to have been the result of 
genuine mutual attachment, and was productive only of 
happiness to both. Eight hundred pounds, which formed 
the marriage portion, was unwisely invested in starting a 
private school at their home near Lichfield, which was 
attended by only three or four pupils, and closed 
abruptly. In 1737 Johnson made a fresh start, and 
this time, fixing his hopes upon a literary career, he 
tramped the dusty road to London. Mrs. Johnson re- 



THE LIFE OF THE POOR WRITER 283 



mained behind, but her husband did not journey alone ; 
for by his side there trudged young Davy Garrick, a 
pupil in the school just closed, a lad of parts, whose 
youthful brain was filled with dreams of fame and for- 
tune to be won in the great city. A curious couple 
they must have made : the hulking, awkward frame of 
the master towering above the graceful, dapper youth 
at his side. The friendship of this strangely assorted 
pair is one of the pleasant features of that later period, 
when fame indeed had come to both, and each was 
master in his special field. 

The miseries of the hack-writer at this period have 
been most vividly pictured by Macaulay. The Life oi 
" Even the poorest pitied him ; and they the Poor 
well might pity him. For if their condition 
was equally abject, their aspirings were not equally 
high, nor their sense of insult equally acute. To lodge 
in a garret up four pairs of stairs, to dine in a cellar 
among footmen out of place, to translate ten hours a 
day for the wages of a ditcher, to be hunted by bailiffs 
from one haunt of beggary and pestilence to another, 
from Grub Street to St. George's Fields, and from St. 
George's Fields to the alleys behind St. Martin's 
Church, to sleep on a bulk in June and amidst the 
ashes of a glass house in December, to die in an hos- 
pital and to be buried in a parish vault, was the fate of 
more than one writer, who, if he had lived thirty years 
earlier, would have been admitted to the sittings of the 
Kitcat or the Scriblerus Club, would have sat in Par- 
liament, and would have been intrusted with embassies 
to the High Allies." ^ 

The cares and privations of this life, if not its ex- 
tremes of wretchedness, Johnson knew by experience, 
through a period of perhaps twenty years. It is only 

1 Essay on Samuel Johnson. 



284 



FROM ADDISON TO BUENS 



just that we recall these painful circumstances as we 
smile over the grotesque figure, the savage temper, 
the voracious appetite, and the slovenly dress, which 
appear in the portrait of the Doctor Johnson whom 
Boswell knew and described. 

In 1730 appeared Johnson's poem London^ a satire 
Early in imitation of Juvenal, which drew consider- 
Labors. attention to its author. It aroused the 

friendly interest of Pope, who endeavored, without suc- 
cess, to secure for the satirist some more substantial 
recognition than mere words of praise. Johnson now 
became a regular contributor to the Gentleman^ s Maga- 
zine^ then published by Cave, furnishing articles on 
all sorts of topics, receiving but scanty pay. From 
November, 1740, to February, 1743, he wrote the par- 
liamentary reports which were published regularly in 
that magazine under the heading Doings of the Sen- 
ate of Lilliput. The manner and the character of the 
work were such as to make this a remarkable achieve- 
ment. No reporters were then permitted in the houses 
of Parliament, but persons employed by the publisher 
attended the sessions, noted the subjects under discus- 
sion, the names of the speakers, and points in the ar- 
guments advanced. These facts were then brought to 
Johnson, who, out of such scant material, composed 
the speeches that were supposed to have been actually 
delivered, and gave them the form which they assumed 
in the published debates. When the fictitious elo- 
quence of these reports led to their acceptance by the 
public as genuine, J ohnson, who was sturdily honest in 
all his dealings, refused to prepare them longer ; but 
the fact remains thg^t he is the author, so far as the 
composition is concerned, of the entire series of impor- 
tant parliamentary efforts ascribed to distinguished 
statesmen during those two years. With humorous 



THE RAMBLER AND THE IDLER 285 



frankness lie declared, when complimented for the im- 
partiality with which he had contrived to deal out 
reason and eloquence to both parties, that while he 
had saved appearances tolerably well, he had taken 
good care that the Whig dogs should not have the best 
of it.i 

In spite of the hardness of the road, the privations 
and wretchedness of his life, in spite of disap- 
pointment and depression, Johnson was ad- bier and 
vancing slowly, but steadily, in his career. 
His prolific pen was kept busily employed on common- 
place shop work by the publishers ; he was not without 
a few influential and sympathetic friends ; but his tasks 
were drudgery, and he lacked altogether the assistance 
that had helped Addison and Swift to a speedy success. 
In 1747 he published proposals for a dictionary of the 
English language, and his name was sufficiently well 
known to warrant the venture in which he next en- 
gaged. In March, 1750, he published the first number 
of the Ramhler^ a little serial modeled somewhat on 
the style of the Tatler and the Sjpectator ; but John- 
son's manner was too heavy ; the agreeable humor and 
lightness of touch which had made the earlier periodi- 
cals so attractive were wholly lacking, and although 
didactic essays, such as Johnson produced, were looked 
upon with greater favor then than now, the Ramhler 
enjoyed no great vogue. For two years, however, the 
little paper continued to appear twice a week, and all 
but two or three numbers came from Johnson's own 
hand. Six years later he again started a periodical of 
somewhat lighter character ; this was the Idlei\ which 
was published weekly, and ran for one hundred and 
three numbers. Its circulation was not large, and with 
the appearance of the final sheet, the long list of essay 
1 See Croker's Boswell for the entire account. 



286 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



serials, begun by Ricbard Steele fifty years before, 
came to an end. 

The great Dictionary was completed and published 
The Die- 1755. It represented an enormous amount 
tionary. labor ; a grammar and a history of the lan- 

guage were included in the plan, and for seven years 
Johnson had been employed upon the task, directing 
the work of assistants and copyists, who were paid out 
of the proceeds from the work. In spite of its errors 
and the queer conceits of its author's personality, this 
Dictionary was a great achievement. No such com- 
prehensive work had ever before been attempted. 
Johnson's fame was now secured, and he is said to have 
derived great satisfaction when subsequently introduced 
as " the great lexicographer," a term especially pleas- 
ing to his classical ear. Some of Johnson's odd defini- 
tions have long served4,to amuse the world. Network 
he defined as " anything reticulated or decussated at 
equal distances, with interstices between the intersec- 
tions." Pension is " an allowance made to any one 
without an equivalent. In England it is generally 
understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for 
treason to his country." Oats he described as "a 
grain which in England is generally given to horses, 
but in Scotland supports the people." These eccen- 
tric lapses of his genius were due in some degree to 
the embarrassments of his struggle with poverty, as 
well as to the capricious indulgence of prejudice. It 
is significant of the frankness of his mind that, when 
asked by a lady why he had defined pastern as " the 
knee of a horse," he instantly replied, " Ignorance, 
madam, pure ignorance." Just before the publication 
of the completed work, its editor addressed to Lord 
Chesterfield the celebrated Letter^ a masterpiece of 
strong invective, rejecting with ironical politeness 



JAMES BOSWELL 



287 



that nobleman's tardy proffer of assistance. It con- 
tains his famous characterization of the literary patron, 
a type familiar enough to the struggling authors of the 
eighteenth century. 

" Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern 
on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has 
reached ground, encumbers him with help ? . . . T hope it 
is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where 
no benefit has been received; or to be unwilling that the 
public should consider me as owing that to a patron which 
Providence has enabled me to do for myself." 

Johnson's resources were still meagre ; and upon the 
death of his mother in 1759,^ he was com- 

Rasselss. 

pelled to rely upon his pen to provide money 
for the funeral expenses. In the evenings of a single 
week he composed the didactic romance of Hasselas, 
an Abyssinian Prince. The tone of this work reflects 
the general melancholy of his mind and suggests the 
futility of the search for happiness in the world. In 
1762, through the persuasion of friends, the essayist 
accepted a pension, granted by the ministry of George 
III. This assured an annual income of <£300, and 
thereafter he was free from want. 

Upon a memorable May afternoon in 1763, in the 
back parlor of a bookseller's shop in Covent james 
Garden, began the singular acquaintance of ^os''^®^^- 
Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. Vain, shallow, 
and garrulous, this young Scotchman, who pretended to 
be studying law, but who happened for the hour to be 
bent upon making the acquaintance of distinguished 
men, recounts the circumstances of his introduction. 

"I was much agitated," says Boswell; "and recollecting 
his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, 

1 Johnson's wife had died in 1752, a loss from which he was long in 
recovering. 



288 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



I said to Davies, 'Don't tell him where I come from.' 
' From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. ' Mr. Johnson ' 
(said I), ' I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot 
help it.' ' That, sir,' roared Johnson, ' I find is what a very- 
great many of your countrymen cannot help.' This stroke 
stunned me a good deal ; and when we had set down I felt 
not a little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might 
come next." 

Poor Boswell ; his idolatry exposed him to many 
similar shocks, but the blindness of his devotion, or his 
unsensitive skin, rendered him invulnerable to all at- 
tacks. He has become famous through his consuming 
admiration for this great man. Samuel Johnson was 
his idol, and his worship was complete. He haunted 
his master's lodgings, trotted after him in his perambu- 
lations down Fleet Street, sat with him at the taverns, 
submitted to his irascible humor, and placidly endured 
the explosions of his thunderous wit. For twenty 
years he kept a journal in which he faithfully recorded 
the acts and sayings of his hero, setting down in mi- 
nute detail all that fell under his observant eye or upon 
his inquisitive ear. The result was Boswell's Life of. 
Johnson^ a biography which surpasses every other ; an 
accurate, complete portraiture of its original, present- 
ing all the little weaknesses and trifling oddities, as 
well as the weighty wisdom, wholesome humor, and 
blunt common sense of his ponderous friend. 

Macaulay has summarized the features of BoswelFs 
portrait : — 

" There is the gigantic body, the huge face seamed with 
the scars of disease, the brown coat, the black worsted 
stockings, the gray wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty 
hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the 
eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches ; we see 
the heavy form rolling ; we hear it puffing ; and then comes 



LATER LIFE 



289 



the ' Why, sir ! ' and the ' What then, sir ?' and the ' No, 
sir ! ' and the ' You don't see your way through the question, 



sir ! ' " 



Was ever hero so frankly portrayed elsewhere ? 

In 1764 was organized the famous Literary Club. 
Its membership included Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, the portrait painter; David Garrick, 
who, since his arrival in London as Samuel Johnson's 
comrade of the road, had made himself the foremost 
actor of his generation ; Goldsmith, Johnson, Burke, 
and a score of others almost equally distinguished for 
literary attainment in that day. They met regularly 
at the Turk's Head Tavern, ate and drank together, 
and made many an evening mellow with their mirth. 
It was as brilliant a group of men as tliat which com- 
posed the Scriblerus Club in the time of Pope and 
Swift, or the coterie that loitered at Will's Coffee- 
House with Addison and Steele. In this congenial 
company the great lexicographer divested himself of 
his formal phrases, his sonorous sentences, and his pon- 
derous words. Here he spoke naturally, and his spon- 
taneity was flavored with the very essence of sound 
sense and lively wit. It was as the recognized leader 
of the Club, and chief critical authority among its 
members, that Johnson is best known to-day. Boswell, 
who, happily, by Dr. J ohnson's autocratic influence, had 
gained admission to the group, is our chief source of 
information on all points connected with its history. 

In 1765 Johnson edited Shakespeare ; and ten years 
later set about preparing an important series j^^^^^j^^^ 
of biographies designed to accompany a great 
edition of the English poets, of which the final volume 
appeared in 1781. In these biographies, afterward 
collected under the title Lives of the Poets^ J ohnson's 
most important criticisms appear, and some of his best 



290 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



prose. Meanwhile lie traveled to some extent, visiting, 
in company with Boswell, the highlands of Scotland 
and the islands off the northern coast — publishing an 
account of his observations in A Journey to the Hebri- 
des. In 1774 he made a tour through Wales, and in 
the following year visited Paris, in company with his 
devoted friends, the Thrales. 

Johnson suffered a stroke of paralysis in 1783, and 
on December 13, 1784, he died in his Fleet-street 
house, amid the scenes with which his life had been 
most closely associated. His body found a resting- 
place of honor in Westminster Abbey. 

The personality of Samuel Johnson is wonderfully 
distinct; his very eccentricities have endeared his 
memory. It is the peculiarities that we first recall: 
how he kept stores of orange peel tucked away in table 
drawers ; how he insisted on touching every post which 
he passed on the street ; how he swallowed cup after 
cup of scalding tea in gulps, until his eyes protruded 
and the sweat stood on his forehead ; how he tore at 
his meat like a famished animal ; how he growled and 
snarled and puffed and grunted, contradicting, reviling, 
overwhelming with a storm of rhetoric all who differed 
from his judgments. But we must remember also the 
courage and the perseverance with which he struggled 
up the long, hard way to fame ; the piety and purity 
of his life ; the kind heart that led him to put pennies 
into the grimy fists of sleeping waifs at night, that they 
might have something to buy a morsel for breakfast ; 
the benevolence that turned his lodgings into an asy- 
lum, where he harbored a blind old woman, a negro 
servant, and two or three other queer dependents whose 
claims upon his charity we do not understand. He was 
respected and beloved by the distinguished people who 
were his friends. Burke wept at his bedside, and 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



291 



parted from him with the words, " My dear sir, you . 
have always been too good for me." And Fanny 
Burney, author of Evelina and other fashionable nov- 
els, stood outside his door, sobbing, when he died. 

As we have the term Addisonian to describe the easy, 
graceful vivacity of style characteristic of the suggestions 
Spectator's pleasant prose, so we use the terms Study. 
Johnsonian and Johnsonese to indicate the sententious and 
weighty diction of the Rambler and the Dictionary. " If 
you were to write a fable about httle fishes," said Goldsmith 
to Johnson on one occasion, " you would make the little 
fishes talk like whales ! " When Johnson was making the 
tour of the Hebrides, he described the following incident 
in a well-known letter to Mrs. Thrale. "When we were 
taken upstairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed on 
which one of us was to lie." But in the published account 
of the journey, it is recorded thus : " Out of one of the 
beds on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, 
a man black as a Cyclops from the forge." Once, speaking 
of a certain play, he remarked, " The Rehearsal has not wit 
enough to keep it sweet ; " then, after a pause, " It has not 
vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction." 

This peculiarity of his diction, however, is characteristic 
of Johnson's earlier works. In Rasselas, and in the papers 
of the Rambler, we note the preponderance of long and 
sonorous Latin derivatives ; while in the Lives of the Poets^ 
Johnson's style is, if anything, more free from this fault than 
that of most writers of his day. The student will notice, 
nevertheless, that Johnson is always formal, and almost 
always in a philosophizing, moralizing mood, and that his 
tone is serious, his manner heavy, pompous. He should note 
the constant use of the balanced structure, and the frequent 
antithesis ; these characteristics he will find later especially 
marked in Macaulay's composition — a composition mod- 
eled in large degree upon that of Johnson. 

The student's reading should include some of the essays 
contained in the Rambler and the Idler, the romance 



292 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



Masselas, and at least one of the Lives of the Poets. The 
handiest volume of miscellaneous selections is the Johnson 
in the Little Master-pieces, edited by Bliss Perry (Double- 
day, Page and Company). Hasselas, edited by O. F. Emer- 
son, is found in the series of English Readings (Holt). 
There is no English author concerning whom more delight- 
ful books have been written, and none whose personality is 
more attractive to the reader who understands. Boswell's 
famous Life is the basis of our familiarity with its hero's 
character, and any of its pages will but stimulate the de- 
sire to read further. Croker's Boswell is the edition which 
inspired the essays on Johnson by Macaulay and Carlyle ; 
while both these essays are of great interest, Macaulay's is 
by far the more vivid : Carlyle gives us a philosophy of 
Johnson; Macaulay paints a portrait. These two essays 
are published in a single volume with full notes, edited by 
W. Strunk (Holt). Mr. J. F. Waller, in Boswell and 
Johnson {CasselVs Popidar Lihrary), has written a delight- 
fully picturesque account of Johnson's intercourse with his 
famous friend ; and Thomas Seccomb's Age of Johnson 
(Bell) is successful in the same particular. Minto's Manual 
of English Prose Literature (Ginn) contains a technical 
analysis of Johnson's style, and J. Scott Clark's Study of 
English Prose Writers contains valuable criticism and 
bibliography. All historians of this period in our literature 
have something worthy of note on Johnson. 

Among the struggling writers of Grub Street, famil- 
iar with the difficulties and the miseries 

Oliver 

Goldsmith, through which Samuel Johnson pushed his 
1728-74. sturdy way to the dictatorship of English let- 
ters in that generation, there is no more personally 
attractive figure than that of Oliver Goldsmith, es- 
sayist, dramatist, novelist, and poet. With light- 
hearted, irresponsible Dick Steele, he shares the ready 
affection of English readers, who are apt to look with 
kindly indulgence upon those victims of genius that 



SCHOOL DAYS 



293 



seem peculiarly incapable of directing their own affairs 
and wholly indifferent to the consequences of their own 
erratic behavior. A free-hearted, impulsive Irish boy, 
born in the insignificant village of Pallas, County 
Longford, Oliver Goldsmith grew up, the son of a poor 
Irish curate. Through the larger part of his boyhood 
the family home was in Lissoy, whither his parents had 
removed when the child was two years old ; and here 
he became familiar with the characters and scenes 
which appear, idealized, in The Deserted Village and 
The Vicar of Wahefield. Like Pope and Johnson, 
Goldsmith was unfortunate in possessing noticeable 
physical defects. He was ugly and uncouth ; his face 
was disfigured with the marks of smallpox, and his 
frame was short and chunky. He was derided at 
school for his awkwardness and his stupidity, yet his 
boundless good-nature, his cheery hopefulness, and his 
easy indifference to the blows of fate, always won him 
sympathy and friends. 

After a troublous term of desultory study in various 
schools and with indifferent tutors, Goldsmith gchooi 
entered Trinity College, Dublin, at seventeen ^^ys. 
years of age. He wore the coarse black gown and red 
cap of the " sizar," did janitor service, and waited on 
table in the commons. Even thus he was wretchedly 
poor, and when, two years after entrance, his father 
died, the young student nearly starved in his attic 
room. To earn a little money he began writing street 
ballads, and used to steal out at night to hear them 
sung and to see if they would sell. It was character- 
istic of his benevolent nature even then that the hard- 
earned shilling's were as often shared with the first 
beggar he met as spent for the clothes and food that 
he sorely needed. Goldsmith's career at the Univer- 
sity was as irregular as that of Swift, who had failed 



294 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



in Trinity sixty years before. He took a conspicuous 
part in some college prank, quarreled with his tutor, 
and ran away, but was brought back by his brother, 
and, somehow, took the bachelor's degree in 1749. 

Weary of tutoring, which he attempted once or twice 
with poor success. Goldsmith made a half-hearted effort 
to enter the Church, and failed. The idea of emigrat- 
ing to America occurred to him ; his relatives equipped 
him with a good horse and thirty pounds in money and 
started him for Cork ; but he missed his ship, and with 
characteristic cheerfulness turned up at home minus the 
money and riding a horse greatly inferior to the one 
with which he set out. He then borrowed fifty pounds 
of his uncle, and set forth for London to study law ; 
but at Dublin he lost his money in a gambling-house 
and again appeared before his astonished relatives as 
hopeful and irresponsible as ever. With fresh assist- 
ance from his uncle, the Dublin graduate finally reached 
Edinburgh in 1752 and began the study of medicine. 
Here Goldsmith became exceedingly popular with his 
student comrades as a good story-teller and singer of 
Irish songs, but seems to have made little progress in 
the study of medicine. Within two years' time a sud- 
den impulse seized him ; he announced that he would 
complete his medical studies abroad ; and forthwith he 
set out on his famous pilgrimage through Europe. 

Ostensibly a student of medicine. Goldsmith jour- 
Wander- neyed to Holland and remained for a brief 
lags. period in Leyden ; but the spirit of roving soon 
took possession of him, and the next two years were 
passed in picturesque wanderings through France, Swit- 
zerland, Germany, and Italy. He may have studied for 
a few months at the University of Padua ; but scarcely 
any details of his life during this period are known. 
More vagabond than student, he begged his way along 



GRUB STREET 



295 



the pleasant roads of southern Europe, exulting in the 
freedom of this careless life, depending on his flute and 
his songs to find a welcome to the homes and tables of 
the peasantry. In February, 1756, Goldsmith arrived in 
London with a rather dubious degree and desperately 
poor. After failing again as a tutor in some country 
boarding school, he became a chemist's assistant, and 
finally obtained a meagre practice as a physician in the 
Southwark district of London. 

The literary career of Oliver Goldsmith began early 
in 1757, when, after meeting Griffiths, editor Grab 
of The Monthly Heview^ he was engaged at street, 
an " adequate " salary to supply copy for that maga- 
zine. The conditions of the hack-writer in that age 
have been described ; struggling with the difficulties 
and discouragements of his position, handicapped by 
his own improvidence and reckless habits of life. Gold- 
smith never emerged wholly from the dangers and mis- 
eries of his class. Yet his literary abilities soon won 
recognition, and his works are more highly esteemed 
than those of the great Doctor Johnson himself. In 
1759 he published An Enquiry into the Present State 
of Polite Learning in Europe^ which attracted gen- 
eral attention by the beauty of its style. He met 
Bishop Percy, compiler of the Reliques of Ancient 
English Poetry^ and Tobias Smollett the novelist, 
then editor of The Critical Pevieio ; to this periodical 
he became a contributor. He started a publication 
called The Bee^ for which he furnished the essays 
which it contained, and wrote for The Busy Body^ 
The Lady's Magazine^ and other periodicals. In The 
Public Ledger appeared his Chinese Letters^ after- 
ward published under the title of The Citizen of the 
Worlds containing the observations and comment of a 
fictitious Oriental visiting England. This work greatly 



296 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



enlarged the reputation of its author, and in 1760 the 
essayist moved into better lodgings in Fleet Street, 
where he was honored with a call from Johnson, who 
soon became a valuable friend. He came to know 
Garrick, Burke, and the rest of that famous group, 
and was one of the nine original members who organ- 
ized the " Club " in 1764. In Boswell's gossipy account 
of its sessions. Goldsmith's blunders and drolleries, 
conscious and unconscious, are given almost as great 
prominence as the more ponderous sallies of the dic- 
tator himself. 

In 1764 appeared the first of Goldsmith's long 

« ,j i.v, poems. The Traveller. It was dedicated to 
Goldsmith's , . , , 

Best his brother, to whom the poet was tenderly 

attached, and whose lovable personality is 
sketched in the opening verses of the poem. Touched 
here and there by the friendly hand of Johnson, The 
Traveller proved an immediate success and gave its 
author a high position among the writers of the time. 
Two years later came the publication of Goldsmith's 
one novel. The Vicar of Wakefield, which had been 
discovered by Samuel Johnson, unfinished, in the poet's 
lodging, during one of Goldsmith's enforced retire- 
ments on account of debt, in 1762. His next produc- 
tion of note was a play. The Good Matured Man, in 
1768 ; but this comedy did not prove a success upon 
the stage. In 1770 Goldsmith published his best- 
known poem. The Deserted Village ; and three j^ears 
later She Stoops to Conquer won an immediate fame 
upon the stage and a popularity which it has never 
lost. 

But Goldsmith's literary success brought him no 
substantial relief from the embarrassments by which 
he was always surrounded. However well paid for his 
writings, he spent double the amount of his income on 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



297 



whatever seized his fancy. Extravagant in his dress 
and in his pleasures, he was also extravagant in his 
benevolence, and recklessly responded to the appeals of 
the worthy and unworthy alike. Hopelessly involved 
in debt, he grew despondent, became ill with a fever, 
and died April 4, 1774, at the early age of forty-five. 
He was buried in the Temple Church, and a monument 
in his honor was erected by the Club, in Westminster 
Abbey. 

The works of Oliver Goldsmith are full of a rich vivacity 
and charm that make them as readable to-day as suggestions 
they were when Doctor Johnson and the other *or Study, 
learned gentlemen of the Club set the seal of their distin- 
guished approval upon them. Goldsmith's great versatility 
is the most conspicuous quality of his genius. His prose 
style is admirable. " Where is now a man who can pen 
an essay with such ease and elegance as Goldsmith ? " de- 
manded Johnson. His ease, simplicity, and naturalness, his 
nice choice of words, his perfect command of epithet and 
phrase, give distinction to everything he wrote. " Gold- 
smith, both in verse and prose," says Hazlitt, " was one of 
the most delightful writers in the language." The general 
qualities of his style will be obvious to any student who 
thoughtfully reads his works. 

An excellent selection from his essays is supplied by the 
volume on Goldsmith in the Little Masterpieces, edited by 
Bliss Perry (Doubleday, Page and Company). Number 68 
of the Riverside Literature Series (Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company) contains The Deserted Village, The Traveller, 
and some minor poems, edited with notes for students' use. 
These two poems should be carefully read as forming a 
literary landmark midway between the compositions of the 
classic period of English poetry and the development of 
the new movement which came with Burns and Wordsworth. 
While the metre is that of Pope and his school, the spirit 
of Goldsmith's poems is more closely akin to that of the 



298 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



poetry which was soon to follow. Let the student compare 
The Deserted Village with Pope's Windsor Forest, taking, 
for example, lines 35-50 and 113-136 of Goldsmith's poem 
for comparison with lines 7-42 and 111-158 of Pope's. 
The superior naturalness and sincerity of the later poet will 
not be difficult to detect. Yet the details of local descrip- 
tion and of characterization in Goldsmith's poems must not 
be interpreted too literally. The poet has idealized his sub- 
jects throughout, and fancy has brightened the colors which 
transform the rude Irish hamlet of Lissoy into this charm- 
ing picture of 

" Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain." 

Goldsmith's portraitures may well be compared with those 
of Chaucer's immortal pilgrims, although the blunt realism 
of the first great English poet is remote enough from the 
elegant idealism of this later minstrel. 

Concerning The Vicar of Wakefield^ more remains to be 
said elsewhere ; it must not be overlooked by the student 
of Goldsmith's works, for it is one of the classics of English 
fiction.^ She Stoops to Conquer stands, with Sheridan's 
School for Scandal and The Rivals, one of the very best 
of acting comedies on the English stage. 

In every one of his works — and there are many not 
enumerated here — the warm heart and quick sympathy, 
the gracious humor, the sweet and wholesome charity for 
all of human kind, reveal in various expression the amiable 
spirit of this easy-going, generous man. While there is 
marked originality in the compositions of Oliver Goldsmith, 
his style was his own, and the winning charm of his person- 
ality pervades his work. It was honest criticism as well as 
affectionate friendship that found expression in Johnson's 
stately Latin epitaph on the dead poet : — 

" Nullum fere seribendi genus non tetigit, 
Nullum quod tetigit non ornabit." 

1 See page 279. An edition of this novel is published by Houghton, 
Mifflin and Company. 



EDWARD GIBBON 



299 



The Life of Goldsmith by J. Foster is the standard 
authority. Washington Irving and Sir Walter Scott each 
wrote his biography. In the English Men of Letters Series 
the Goldsmith is by William Black, and Austin Dobson 
is the author of the Life in the Great Writers Series. 
Macaulay's Essay, and the chapter which treats of Gold- 
smith in Thackeray's English Humourists, should not be 
overlooked. 

Contemporary with Johnson and Goldsmith, con- 
tributing with them to the wealth of eight- j^^^^^ 
eenth century prose, were many writers of Hume, 
important rank. David Hume, a Scotch ad- 
vocate, born in Edinburgh in 1711, was the first to 
attempt a comprehensive, accurate history of England. 
By the publication of various essays upon philosophy 
and morals, Hume had already become known as a 
keen, hard-headed reasoner of the utilitarian school 
when, in 1752, he formed the design of writing the his- 
tory with which his name is associated. The first vol- 
ume of Hume's England appeared in 1754 ; the work 
was completed in 1761. The historian had aimed to 
produce an interesting book ; in this purpose he suc- 
ceeded. The History is famous for its elegance and 
smoothness of style. But Hume was a strong partisan 
of Tory interests, and his political prejudice is obvious, 
particularly in his defense of the Stuarts. Our chief 
interest in the work is due to the fact that here we find 
for the first time an intelligent study of politics and an 
attempt to give an account of the people and manners 
of an age. 

Gibbon, the greatest of English historians, was born 
at Putney. His career as a student, first at j-^^^j.^ 
Westminster School and later at Oxford, Gibbon, 
was extremely unsatisfactory. In the course 
of much desultory reading, however, young Gibbon 



300 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



absorbed with great interest the facts of oriental his- 
tory. 

" The dynasties of Assyria and Egypt were my top and 
cricket-hall," he says ; " and my sleep has been disturbed by 
the difficulty of reconciling the Septuagint with the Hebrew 
computation." 

Gibbon's love of historical study was further stimu- 
lated by subsequent study (during a residence in Lau- 
sanne, Switzerland) and by a trip to Italy in 1764. 

" It was at Rome," he writes, " on the 15th October, 1764, 
as I sat musing among the ruins of the Ca]3itol, while the 
barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Ju- 
piter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city 
first started to my mind." 

But it was not until 1776 that he published, at Lon- 
don, the first volume of his stately work. Volumes II. 
and III. appeared in 1781 ; and six years afterward, 
at Lausanne, the three later volumes were completed. 

Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the 
The Decline Roman Empire covers the period beginning 
and Fall. with the reign of Trajan, 98 a. d., and ending 
with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The skepti- 
cism of its author regarding the authorities upon Chris- 
tian history occasions an attitude objectionable in the 
minds of many readers ; but it should not be forgotten 
that this same skeptical attitude toward the evidence 
of ancient authority is the very quality which sustains 
the historical accuracy of Gibbon — " the one historian 
of the eighteenth century," as Freeman declares, 
" whom modern research has neither set aside nor threat- 
ened to set aside." The prose style of the Decline and 
Fall is most eloquent. History, in Gibbon's concep- 
tion, is a great panorama of momentous events ; and 
this succession of impressive scenes he presents in pic- 



EDMUND BUREE 



301 



tnres glowing with color. His style is tliat of the ora- 
tor ; his diction, like that of Johnson, is largely Latin 
— weighty, sonorous.^ 

William Robertson, a countryman of Hume, was a 
third in this group of historians. His first ^j^j^j^ 
work, a History of Scotland during the Rotertson, 
Reigns of Mary and James VI. (to 1603), ^721-93. 
was published in 1759. Ten years later appeared his 
History of the Emperor^ Charles V. In 1777 he 
produced also a History of America. Robertson's 
histories do not rank with those of Hume and Gibbon. 
His equipment was not to be compared with theirs ; 
and while his style was greatly applauded by his gen- 
eration, it has long since gone out of favor. 

By far the man of largest mould at the close of the 
century was Edmund Burke, the essayist and ^^j^^^ 
parliamentarian, greatest of English political Burke, 
writers, the one whom Dr. Johnson termed 
the first man in the House of Commons because he 
was the first man everywhere. Burke was an Irish- 
man and was born in Dublin. He was educated at 
Trinity, but failed to carry off any special honors. In 
1750 he became a law student in London, but appeared 
to be fonder of travel and literature than of the law. 
He published his first essays in 1756 : the first, A Vin- 
dication of Natural Society., a satirical reply to Bo- 
lingbroke's attack on established religion ; the second, 
A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas 
of the Sublime and Beautiful. This last essay was at 
least indicative of the young law clerk's interest for 
aesthetics. Edmund Burke had the soul of a poet ; his 
imaginative power, expressing itself in bursts of pro- 
found feeling, is the essential element in his oratory 
which brought him fame. 

1 The interesting- Memoirs of Gibbon are edited by 0. F. Emerson 
in the Athenceum Press Series (Ginn). 



302 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



In 1765 Biirke became secretary to the prime miti- 
Pariia- ister, and the next year entered the House 
mentary of Commons for Wendover in Buckingham- 
shire. In Parliament Burke's career was 
distinguished by his vigorous championship of the 
American colonies. His Speech on Conciliation with 
America (1775) is a familiar classic in all American 
schools. Burke next became interested in matters re- n 
lating to abuses of power by government officials in 
India, and finally conducted the celebrated but unsuc- 
cessful case for impeachment against Warren Hastings 

— the case which supplied Macaulay with the theme 
of one of his most picturesque essays. In his Reflec- 
tions on the French Revolution (1790) and the Let- 
ter on a Regicide Peace (1796), Burke was again 
upon the unpopular side, bitterly, almost brutally, de- 
nouncing the princij^les of the Revolutionists. His 
attitude caused a rupture with his party and the break- 
ing of old associations with his friends among the 
Whigs. Burke was raised to the peerage as Earl of 
Beaconsfield in 1796, but died within a year, while pre- 
paring to enter the House of Lords. 

/ In the field of state politics Burke was a philosopher. 
As a Man ^^^^ ^ clear view of every subject upon 

of Letters, which he moved. His grasp of minute de- 
tails was extraordinary ; the range of his knowledge, 
marvelous. In the expression of ideas the statesman 
turned poet. Figures of rhetoric became a part of the 
machinery by which he impressed — not merely adorned 

— his argument. The prose of no English writer is 
richer in those rhetorical beauties which are commonly 
regarded as ornaments of style. Metaphor follows 
metaphor, in long passages of eloquent periods, until, 
sometimes, the idea of the image almost buries the idea 
of the speech ; but such extravagance is not common, 



AS A MAN OF LETTERS 



303 



and the figures are used with discretion as well as with 
ease. It is, therefore, as one of the masters of our 
English tongue, as well as a great political writer and 
a leader of English thought, that we must recognize 
Edmund Burke. He was the last of the great prose 
writers in this remarkable age of prose. ^ 

V. THE KOMANTIC MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH POETRY. 

In the latter half of the eighteenth century there 
appeared among certain of the English poets a well- 
defined movement away from the conventional models 
of verse as established in the compositions of Dryden 
and Pope. It has been found difficult, however, to 
formulate a description of this movement which shall 
adequately distinguish the new school. Within the 
term romantic — now used to designate this movement 
— these three elements are clearly included: (1) A 
subjective treatment ; that is, such a handling of the 
theme as shall reveal the spiritual attitude of the au- 
thor, his reflections, his moral sentiment, his passion. 
(2) A choice of picturesque material. This is the 
quality which we associate most frequently with the 
term to-day. At the time of which we speak, the taste 
of the age was especially drawn to medieval subjects, 
for the history and traditions of the Middle Ages are 
rich in such themes. Sometimes the poets turned to 
oriental sources. In its extreme phase, romanticism 
reveled in ghostly subjects and appealed to the uni- 
versal interest in mystery and horror. (3) A spirit 
of reaction was a natural characteristic ; for such a 
spirit is the logical accompaniment of an important 
movement in any field of literature at any age. The 
term romantic is even used in this last sense alone, 

1 Consult the volume of Selections from Edmund Burke, edited by 
Bliss Perry, in the English Readings (Holt). 



304 FROM ADDISON TO BUKNS 



indicating merely the passing from one style of compo- 
sition to another, which, because of its novelty, is then 
termed romantic — the word classical being used to 
describe the old, accepted model. But all the elements 
here enumerated are implied in the romantic movement 
now under discussion.^ 

James Thomson, an account of whose work has been 
Beginners given (p. 265), was the first poet of promi- 
inthe nence to sound the new note. The Seasons 
(1730) clearly indicates the tendency of the 
reaction. In the thin volume of Oriental Eclogues^ 
published by William Collins (1721-59) in 1742, the 
tendency is manifested slightly, and among that writer's 
famous Odes — although that On the Passions is too 
reminiscent of Dryden and Pope to be significant in 
this connection — there are several, such as the Ode 
to Simplicity^ the one To Evening^ and that On the 
Death of Thomson, which are clear in their relation to 
this movement. 

In 1743 there appeared a remarkable poem in blank 
verse entitled The Grave, the work of a young Scotch 
writer, Kobert Blair (1699-1746). This composition 
is vastly superior to scores of contemplative " church- 
yard " poems which were at that time appearing ; it 
was characterized by a freedom of treatment significant 
of the revolt from Pope. Its vigorous diction and 
pregnant phrases are immediately suggestive of the 
Elizabethan age. The spirit of the poem is essentially 
romantic. 

But most notable of all those whose influence, con- 
Thomas sciously or unconsciously, was thrown in the 
Gray, new direction, was the poet Thomas Gray. 
1716-71. rjy^^ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyards 

1 Compare English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, by H. A. 
Beers (Holt), and the briefer English Romantic Movement, by W. L. 
Phelps (Gian). 



GRAY'S ELEGY 



305 



published in 1751, is the climax of the meditative, or 
" melancholy," verse of the first half of the eighteenth 
century. In itself the Elegy is not wholly a romantic 
poem, but its tone is not discordant to the new school. 

Gray's mind belonged to that reflective, serious type 
portrayed in Milton's II Penseroso ; the pensive, mel- 
ancholy spirit dominated his life as well as his verse, 
and nature developed in him J;he romantic character. 
As a schoolboy at Eton he appeared studious and shy ; 
at Cambridge his melancholy grew habitual. His ex- 
periences with life confirmed Gray in this soberness of 
spirit. In 1742 he wrote the graceful but dispirited 
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College^ with its 
familiar close : — 

" Where ignoranee is bliss 
'T is folly to be wise." 

At about this time he began the composition of the 
Elegy. For five or six years he lived the life Gray's 
of a scholar, almost that of a recluse, at Cam- Elegy, 
bridge, devoting himself to the classics. His home was 
nominally at Stoke Poges, a beautiful village near 
Windsor, where his mother and sister were living ; 
and here, in 1750, he finished the poem upon which 
rests his fame. It was printed in 1751 to forestall an 
unauthorized publication. The Elegy is apparently 
the best-known poem in the language. For perfection 
of form and finish it is unsurpassed. A wonderful 
unity of feeling pervades the poem, of which the key- 
note is struck in the opening line, — 

" The curfew tolls the knell of parting- day." 

Upon the mind of an appreciative reader the poeti- 
cal effect of this composition becomes more and more 
impressive as his acquaintance with literature broadens 
and his familiarity with the Elegy grows. 



306 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



The poet's life was devotecl rather to self-culture than 
The Ro- to production. Although he held a lecture- 
juanticist. g}jjp jj-j University, he never lectured. The 
volume of his poetry is surprisingly thin. The Pro- 
gress of Poesy and The Bard, representing his most 
important work, appeared in 1757. This last poem 
was essentially romantic. The story of The Bard is 
based upon an ancient Welsh tradition of Edward L's 
conquest of that country. As Edward's army is wind- 
ing through a deep valley, the march is suddenly inter- 
rupted by the appearance of a venerable figure seated 
on the summit of an inaccessible rock. The aged bard 
denounces the king for all the misery which he has 
brought upon the land, including the cruel death of all 
the bards who had fallen into Edward's hands, and 
prophesies that poetic genius shall never be wanting in 
the island to celebrate virtue and valor or to defy op- 
pression. The bard then leaps from the height and is 
swallowed in the river at its foot. It will be recognized 
at once that here is genuine romantic material ; indeed 
this poem is an important landmark in the course of 
the new movement. Gray's later poems were similar 
in spirit. The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of 
Odin are drawn from Norse legend ; The Death of 
Hoel is Welsh in its source. 

Although the poems of Gray were abundantly ad- 
infiuence ^i^^^^? taste of his age was against him. 
ofciassi- The influence of Pope's authority, enforced 
by the criticism of Johnson, still stamped it- 
self upon the verse that had the vogue and won current 
fame. Even Goldsmith, whose ideas seem to have been 
somewhat like those of the new school, was too inti- 
mately connected with Johnson to depart from the old 
methods. He declared against the use of blank verse, 
and clothed his really romantic idealizations in the 
classic garb of the couplet. 



THE RELIQUES AND THE FORGERIES 307 



Yet the development of romanticism was not to be 

checked. A Hiohland schoolmaster, James 

. . TI16 Re- 

Macpherson (1738-96), published in 1760 nques 
some Fragments of Ancient Poetry . . . p^yg^^^gg 
Translated from the Gaelic or Erse Lan- 
guage. In 1712 he published Fingal^ an Ancient Epic 
Poem in Six Books, as his translation of the work of 
Ossian, the ancient bard of his race. More Ossianic 
fragments appeared in the following year, and a sensa- 
tional debate arose over the genuineness of these so- 
called translations. The interest in this romantic 
revival was further evidenced and wonderfully stimu- 
lated by the publication in 1765 of Bishop Percy's 
famous collections of Scotch and English ballads, 
known under the title of The Reliques of Ancient 
English Poetry, and five years later the field of ro- 
manticism was enlarged by the appearance of Percy's 
Northern Antiquities, a translation from the French 
of Mallet's History of 'Denmark, which first revealed 
to Gray the rich treasure of Norse mythology. 

The popular success of Macpherson's Fragments 
appears to have suggested the publication of several 
specimens of ancient English verse, by Thomas Chat- 
terton (1752-70). These remarkable poems, attributed 
to Thomas Rowley, a monk of the fifteenth century, 
were clearly proved to be forgeries ; and this " marvel- 
ous boy," as Wordsworth calls him, filled with chagrin 
and overcome by the disappointments and hardships of 
his young career, ended his life by suicide, at the age 
of seventeen. The history of our literature records no 
other case so strange and pathetic as this. 

Very different in spirit from the productions just 
described, yet essentially an important factor in the 
romantic movement, was the work of William Cowper. 
Like Gray, a shy, sensitive youth, the poet seems to 



308 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



have been foredoomed to dejection and morbid melan- 
Wiiiiam choly. In Westminster School he was one 
Cowper, of a coterie who cultivated the muse of im- 

1731-1800. , . J • 1 j- 

promptu verse m games and exercises; but 
he suffered much from the rough-and-ready life of the 
public school, and years afterward expressed his dis- 
trust of the system : — 

" The rude will scuffle through Avith ease enough, 
Great schools suit best the sturdy and the rough." ^ 

Cowper's timidity clung to him through life ; one less 
fitted to grapple with its practical experiences it would 
be hard to find. Friends secured for the poet an 
appointment as Clerk of the «Tournals in the House of 
Lords ; but the ordeal of qualifying, and the thought 
that he would be obliged to read the records in public, 
were too much for his mistrustful spirit, and in despair 
he attempted suicide. For eighteen months he was 
under treatment in a madhouse, and fits of deep de- 
pression were his frequent portion afterward. While 
under strong Calvinistic influences during his residence 
at Olney in Buckinghamshire, Cowper composed a 
large number of hymns contained in the Olney Collec- 
tion. Among the most familiar are the following: 
God moves in a mysterious way^ Oh! for a closer 
walk with God^ and There is a fountain filled loith 
hlood. 

It is a singular fact that to this super-sensitive and 

, ^ . morbidly serious poet we owe one of the live- 
John Gilpin. ^ . . 

liest and most entertaming or humorous 

poems, The Diverting History of John Gilpin. One 

evening in 1782, as we are told, when Cowper was in 

one of his melancholy moods, the story of Gilpin's ride 

was related to the poet by his vivacious friend. Lady 

Austen. Peals of laughter were heard issuing from 

^ Tirocinium ; or, a Heview of Schools. 



THE TASK 



309 



the poet's bedroom during the night, and the next 
morning the poem was read to the company at break- 
fast. 

To Lady Austen's suggestion also was due the com- 
position of Cowper's most elaborate poem, ^j^^^^^j^ 
The Task. The significance of its title is 
explained by the fact that when the poet begged for 
some "task" to relieve the gloom of his low spirits, 
that lively lady suggested " The Sofa " as a subject for 
his verse. In 1785 this long poem in blank verse was 
completed, and fully established its author's fame. Its 
characteristics were those of the new school. Cowper's 
Task is removed as far as possible from the conven- 
tionalities of the classicists. Naturalness is its charm. 
After having sung the evolution of the sofa in pleasant 
mock-heroic strain, the poet lets his fancy roam forth 
among those rural sights and sounds which 

" Exhilarate the spirit, and restore 
The tone of languid nature." 

By an easy contrast his theme suggests the surpass- 
ing attractiveness of nature in her native haunts, and 
the spirit of his thought is expressed at the end of the 
First Book in the familiar line, — 

" God made the country, and man made the town." 

Scattered through the six books of Cowper's Task are 
many passages of bright description and many features 
which directly suggest the manner of Wordsworth, the 
great leader of the natural school at the beginning of 
the next century. 

Cowper's last days were days of gloom. A poem 
written On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture (the 
poet's mother had died when Cowper was a boy of six) 
is one of the tenderest and most impressive of his com- 
positions. Another, The Castaway^ dated oqe year 



310 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



before his death, is a striking expression of the hope- 
less misery of his condition : — 

" No voice divine the storm allay'd, 
No light propitious shone ; 
When, snateh'd from all effectual aid, 
We peiish'd, each alone : 
But I heneath a rougher sea, 
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he." 

The tendency in English verse was now emphatically 
Robert toward naturalness of expression, the study 
Burns, of life itself, and a frank sympathy with all 
human interests. The Revolutionary Period 
had dawned, and while France furnished the field of 
immediate struggle between the forces of that intensely 
dramatic epoch, the ideas and principles of the time 
were fermenting everywhere in Europe. In England 
the voices of the poets responded now and then to the 
new impulse. This spirit spoke in the poetry of Robert 
Burns. 

The national poet of Scotland, nearest of all poets 
to the heart of the English-speaking world, was the 
son of an intelligent, high-minded Ayrshire farmer 
who, with his own hands, had built the clay cabin in 
which the poet was born. The peasant's son had little 
to expect in the way of school privileges ; but his father 
believed in the advantages of education and provided 
what he could. The poet got a brief school training 
and absorbed the literature of his land. The real 
inspiration of his genius, perhaps, came from the pic- 
turesque personality of old Betty Davidson, a member 
of the household, whose memory was a storehouse of 
ballad and legend. To her tales, and to the songs 
of the housewives, Burns gave a ready ear. The tunes 
of the folk songs rang in his head — homely melodies 
crooned by mothers to their infants by cottage door or 
fireside. He whistled them as he followed the plough, 



THE AYRSHIRE PLOUGHMAN 



311 



until liis own songs came, fairly singing themselves 
into form, innocent of elaborate art, but in perfect tune 
with nature and throbbing with the passion of his 
soul. Never a poet sang with greater spontaneity than 
Robert Burns ; never one looked more keenly or more 
sanely into the world of living things about him. 

" The simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough ; 
Learning his tuneful trade from ev'ry bough." ^ 

When Burns's father died in 1784, the poet, with 
his brothers and sisters, tried with ill success ^j^g ^yy_ 
to carry on the farm. Then Robert, together shire 
with one of the brothers, controlled a small 
estate, poorly equipped, at Mossgiel ; and here he wrote 
some of his best-known verse. The Cotter's Saturday 
Night is a picture in detail of a typical godly Scotch 
home — just such an one as that in which his own 
childhood had been passed. Straight from the soil 
came the wholesome flavor in the lines To a Mouse 
and those To a Mountain Daisy. In 1786 the failure 
to make profit from the farm, the bitterness of the 
struggle which provided but the barest living, and the 
results of certain follies due to his own impulsive, pas- 
sionate nature, afflicted Burns so acutely that he lost 
heart and planned to go to Jamaica. To supply means 
for such an undertaking, his friends suggested collect- 
ing and printing the poems already composed. The 
suggestion was accepted, and in that same year ap- 
peared at Kilmarnock the first edition of Burns's 
poems. Its reception was hearty and enthusiastic. 
An invitation came urging a visit to Edinburgh, whither 
the poet went to receive the honors of a literary lion 
and to publish a later and slightly enlarged edition of 
his works. The numberless songs of his later years 
were not collected in any subsequent volume during 
1 The Brigs of Ayr. 



312 



FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



the poet's life, but appeared in current publications, or 
circulated, like the old folk ballads themselves, from 
tongue to tongue. 

The Scotch ploughman's " pith o' sense and pride o' 
worth" were invincible to flattery. When the applause 
grew faint, Burns turned again to the plough, married 
Jean Armour, and settled upon a farm at Ell island in 
Dumfrieshire. Here again agriculture proved unprofit- 
able and was not continued beyond a 3^ear. The influ- 
ence of friends had secured for the poet an appoint- 
ment as ganger and exciseman over a district of ten 
parishes, the duties of this office keeping him much 
upon the road. It was an unfortunate kindness ; for 
the easy, convivial temper of Burns exposed him to all 
the harmful influences found in the associations of his 
office. He was a lusty " flesh and blood " man, pos- 
sessed by masterful passions. The weakness of self- 
indulgence was his ruin. Disappointment over his 
failures, and ill-health — the fruit of his own excesses 
— clouded his spirits more and more. He died at 
thirty-seven. The line in A Bard^s Epitaph he had 
written of himself : — 

" But thoughtless follies laid him low, 
And stained his name." 

There is no necessity to gloss over the errors of 
The Gift of ^^^^S- ^he poet paid a heavy penalty for 
Rotoert his mistakes ; and in spite of his weaknesses 
Burns. ^j^^ world's attitude toward genial " Bobbie " 
Burns is that of an indulgent and affectionate compas- 
sion. His wonderful gift of song remains unrivaled in 
our later literature, and that inheritance preserves for 
us the best of Robert Burns. Into his verse the poet 
flung himself : his patriotism, his blithe humor, the wit 
of the philosopher, the laugh of the boy. His love 
songs are tender with emotion, or blaze with the heat 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



313 



of his passion. In every line he is natural, spontane- 
ous, carelessly indiscreet. The frank expression of his 
feeling is necessary, inevitable. In his love of nature 
he pictures exactly what he sees and hears ; he is real- 
istic to the last degree. He is impressed by the things 
that are alive ; his interest is in birds and beasts and 
flowers — above all in men. He sympathizes with the 
revolt against oppression, and the literature of the 
Revolution produced nothing finer than the ringing 
appeal of his noble lines : — 

" Then let us pray that come it may 
(As come it will for a' that) 
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth 
Shall bear the gree an' a' that ! 
For a' that an' a' that, 
It 's comin' yet for a' that, 
That man to man the world o'er 
Shall brithers be for a' that." i 



In the study of Burns the selections provided in Number 
77 of the Riverside Literature Series are excel- guggeg. 
lent. A glossary of Scotch words accompanies this tions for 
text. The two poems, The Cotter's Saturday ^^^'^y- 
Night and Tarn 0' Shanter, should be carefully read. It wiU 
be easy to recognize in the first resemblances to Gray's 
Elegy and Goldsmith's The Deserted Village. Point out 
some of these correspondences, and also try to see the ori- 
ginahty of Burns's own expression and feeling. What is the 
stanza form of this poem ? Why does the poet vary in his 
dialect between Scotch and English — with what effect ? 
Indicate some of the expressions which illustrate his realism 
and his naturalness of tone ; again point out passages in 
which imagery and phrasing are more conventional. What 
is the moral of the poem ? Of all Burns's poems there is 
none more characteristic in its hearty, rollicking humor 
than Tarn 0' Shanter. At the same time, in the midst of its 
boisterous gayety there are passages of high poetical power, 
^ Is There for Honest Poverty. 



314 FROM ADDISON TO BURNS 



over which a careless reader may slip half-consciously, swept 
on by the torrent of furious mirth. Read closely lines 
53-78, and study the comparisons and phrasings. Point 
out personifications and metaphors. Consider the effect se- 
cured in lines 73-78 by using the words rattling, blast, 
speedy gleams, swallowed, and the entire verse Loud, deep, 
and lang the thunder bellowed. Commit the entire passage 
to memory. 

What seem to be the characteristic qualities of the poems 
To a Mouse and To a Mountain Daisy ? Point out the 
elements that impress you most and tell why they impress 

Give considerable attention to Burns's songs, especially to 
Is There for Honest Poverty, John Anderson, Duncan 
Gray, Flow Gently, Sweet Afton, Highland Mary, To 
Mary in Heaven, I Love My Jean, Wert Thou in the 
Cauld Blast, A Red, Red Rose, Bonnie Doon, and Scots 
Wha Hae wV Wallace Bled. It is easy to feel the lyric 
quality in these poems ; but try also to appreciate the light- 
ness of the touch and the perfect naturalness of the expres- 
sion. 

Read the Address to the Unco' Guid, and weigh the senti- 
ment as well as its application in the poet's own experience. 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns, and appropriate sections of 
Heroes and Hero Worship, should be read. J. C. Shairp's 
Aspects of Poetry and On Poetic Interpretation of Nature 
(Houghton, Mifflin and Company) may be consulted. The 
biography of Burns in the English Men of Letters Series 
is also by Shairp. That in the Great Writers Series is by 
Blackie. Burns's Poems are published complete in the 
Riverside Classics and (edited by W. E. Henley) in the 
Cambridge Edition. 



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CHAPTER VI 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

FEOM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



I. The New Poetry : Wordsworth, Coleridge. 
II. The Romantic 3Iovement in English Fiction: Scott. 

III. The Revolutionary Poets : Byron, Shelley. 

IV. Romanticism in English Prosfi : Lamb, De Quincey. 
V. The Great Essayists : Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin. 

VI. Maturity of the English Novel : Dickens, Thackeray, 
George Eliot. 
VII, The Victorian Poets : Browning, Tennyson. 



I. THE NEW poetry: WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE. 

As tlie new century began its course, the roman- 
tic tendencies, whicli had developed with increasing 
strength in the verse of Thomson, Gray, Cowper, and 
Burns, reached their culmination in the new poetry of 
wiuiam modern school. Wordsworth and Cole- 

Words- ridge, intimately associated by a friendship 
1770-1850. significantly influential upon both, are closely 

Samuel associated also in their relation to the roman- 
Taylor . ^ • • • i i 

Coleridge, tic movement. it is interesting and also 
1772-1834. ijjjpQi^^g^jji^ to note that while contributing 
equally to the impetus and largeness of that movement, 
their contributions represent two distinct and even con- 
trasted phases of romantic literature. Simplicity and 
naturalness found extreme expression in the poetry of 
Wordsworth ; the mystical and weird attracted Cole- 
ridge. The imagination of the latter wandered among 
the fantastic creations of a dream world, mysterious, 



INFLUENCES OF THE FKENCH REVOLUTION 317 



splendid ; Wordsworth, on the other hand, was pro- 
foundly responsive to the romantic element in the 
world of common life. Among English poets he is 
nature's great interpreter, contemplative, calm, yet 
prophet-like in the voicing of his message to men. 

William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, in 
Cumberland, the northernmost shire of Eng- ^^^^^ 
land. Here lies the heart of the English worth's 
Lake Country, proverbial for the beauty and 
impressiveness of its scenery. Its hills and lakes were 
around him in his youth ; the Derwent, " fairest of all 
rivers," flowed near the homestead, blending its mur- 
murs with his nurse's song. Wordsworth's school days 
were spent at Hawkeshead, where he learned to appre- 
ciate the homely comforts and simple manners of the 
cottagers with whom he dwelt, and where he came in 
closest touch with nature in her wildest and lovelies* 
forms. He roamed the woods alone, climbed the crags, 
in summer and winter indulged his athletic tastes in all 
the outdoor sports suited to the season. Even in child- 
hood the poet spirit of the boy was fascinated, awed, by 
the solitude of forest and mountain, hearing a Voice 
and feeling a Presence in the mysterious environment 
of nature's secluded haunts.-^ 

The years 1787-91 were passed by Wordsworth at 
the University of Cambridge. The period was influences 
marked by little of significance in the poet's pj-ench 
life other than his eager response to the im- Revolution, 
mediate inspiration of the hour. With whole-souled 
enthusiasm he welcomed the promptings and appeals of 
the Revolution. Cowper and Burns among English 
poets had voiced the sentiments of liberty, equality, and 
universal brotherhood. Southey and Coleridge were 

1 Read the account of the poet's childhood and school times in The 
Prelude, Book i. 



318 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



prompt to express their sympathy with the cause, and 
among all the younger men there was none more ardent 
in his championship than Wordsworth. When a few 
years later he came to describe, in The Prelude^ the 
sensations and emotions of that time, he wrote : — 

" Bliss was it in that Dawn to be alive, 
But to be young was very heaven." 

When his university course was finished, the young 
graduate spent some few months in London, looking 
on at the multiform life of the capital ; but France 
lured him forth, and in 1792 Wordsworth went to 
Paris. He viewed the rubbish ruin of the Bastile, then 
left the disordered city to travel in quieter districts of 
France. In October of the same year, following the 
September massacres, cheered by the proclamation of 
the Republic, he returned to " the fierce metropolis " 
,and ranged the city with new ardor. But the horror 
of recent events was too great, and the poet was hardly 
able to throw off the spell. He was inclined to make 
common cause with the Girondists, but friends at home 
prevailed upon him to return. Depressed by the fail- 
ures of the Revolution, melancholy over its crimes, the 
young enthusiast came again to England, disheartened 
and doubting. For a time he lost faith and hope ; 
then by the affectionate leading of his only sister, 
Dorothy Wordsworth, and by Nature's self, the poet 
was guided into 

" those sweet counsels between head and heart, 
Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace." ^ 

Wordsworth and his sister made a home in the south 
Back to Na- of England, in Dorset and Somersetshire, 
ture. until 1798. The quiet of the country, long 

rambles across the downs, and the charm of rural life 

^ Read the account of the poet's residence in France, and its influ- 
ence, in The Prelude^ Book x. 



COLERIDGE 



319 



combined to create an atmosphere in which the poet's 
serener self gradually awoke to the consciousness of its 
peculiar gift. In 1793 Wordsworth published a slight 
volume of Descriptive Sketches. In 1797 Coleridge 
came to visit him at Racedown ; and the acquaintance 
which had been previously formed ripened into friend- 
ship, intimate and life-long. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Ottery, St. 
Mary's, in Devonshire. Precocious and im- Q^jg^j^gg 
aginative, he passed the years of childhood 
without experiencing the thoughts or exhibiting the 
actions of a child. At Christ's Hospital, a charity school, 
where he found a classmate and comrade in young 
Charles Lamb, Coleridge won distinction as a scholar. 
He was deeply interested in metaphysics, was given also 
to day-dreams and to poetry. In 1791 he entered the 
University of Cambridge, and soon became well known 
for his radical views. With the extreme ideas of the 
revolutionary movement he appeared to be in hearty 
sympathy. A Utopian scheme to establish an ideal com- 
munity somewhere on the banks of the Susquehanna 
enlisted the active cooperation of both Coleridge and 
Southey, but this dream of a new Pantisocracy, as they 
called it, did not materialize. Coleridge now turned 
seriously to writing and lecturing as his vocation. In 
1795 he married and settled at Clevedon in Somerset- 
shire. He next appeared as the editor of a radical 
publication called The Watchman^ which came to an 
end with the tenth number, and was often heard dis- 
coursing upon political and economic questions in the 
pulpits of Unitarian chapels. In 1797 he moved to 
Nether Stowey, and was living there when the intimacy 
with Wordsworth began. 

In spite of some essential differences in theory^ and 
method, these two poets were attracted to each other by 



320 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



a very definite agreement in sympathies and ideals. 
The Lyrical They determined to combine their forces ; and 
Ballads. ^is a result of their plans there appeared in 
1798 the volume of Lyrical Ballads. No more sig- 
nificant collection of poems was ever published. In 
accordance with the plan adopted, poems were in- 
cluded illustrating the theory of each writer. It was 
Wordsworth's purpose to show how interest may be 
aroused by imaginative treatment of the commonplace, 
while Coleridge sought to make the supernatural im- 
pressively real through the truthfulness of the emotions 
awakened. Most significant of Wordsworth's contri- 
butions were the simple narrative poems, such as Mar- 
garet (afterward incorporated in The Excursion)^ 
Exjiostulation and Reply., The Tables Turned^ Simon 
Lee^ The Old Cumberland Beggar^ The Idiot Boy^ 
and Peter Bell. These compositions aptly illustrated 
the poet's insistent principle of simplicity in form and 
diction — some of them extravagantly. One or two of 
the poems rose measurably above the rest ; the unmis- 
takable note of a great genius was struck in the splen- 
did Lines^ Composed a Few Miles above Tintern 
Abbey. Coleridge was represented in the volume by 
that unique masterpiece of weirdness and melody, The 
Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In spite of their sig- 
nificance the new poems were received with ridicule, if 
not with contempt. A scattered few rose to the appre- 
ciation and enjoyment of the work. 

Coleridge and the Words worths now went abroad 
— Coleridge to become absorbed in German meta- 
physics, Wordsworth and his sister to pass a quiet, 
almost lonely winter in the little town of Goslar. Here 
the poet composed new ballads, including Lucy Gray^ 
Ruth^ and Nutting ; he also wrote some of the pas- 
sages which appeared later in The Prelude. 



SUBSEQUENT POEMS 



321 



In the spring of 1799 the Wordsworths arrived again 
in England ; and as a result o£ a pedestrian Qjas- 
tour in Cumberland, taken together with 
Coleridge, who had returned from Germany before 
them, they once more settled in the beautiful Lake 
region, their early home. The poet and his sister 
rented a cottage at Grasmere. In 1800 Coleridge re- 
moved his household to Keswick, and three years later 
was joined by the poet Southey. This neighborly asso- 
ciation gave rise to the term the Lake poets^ a title 
which, beyond indicating a certain sympathy in taste 
and purpose, has little technical significance. 

At Grasmere, where Wordsworth lived until remov- 
ing to Eydal Mount in 1813, the poet produced his 
most impressive verse. A second edition of the Lyrical 
Ballads in 1800 contained a prose preface in which 
Wordsworth set forth his theory of verse, maintaining 
that the language of poetry should be that of real life. 
While the critics continued to ridicule the new poetry 
and its author's peculiar views, the younger generation 
of readers was beginning to enjoy the truthfulness 
and pathos of rustic character and the realistic natural- 
ness of country life and scene as presented in the 
ballads. 

In 1802 the poet married an old schoolmate, his 
cousin, Mary Hutchinson, — 

" A creattrre not too brig-ht or g-ood 
For htiman nature's daily food ; 
For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles." ^ 

Besides the Sonnets — some of which rank among 
our best compositions in this field of verse — subsequent 
the important poems- of Wordsworth's ma- Poems, 
turity are Tlie Ode to Duty (1805), the great Ode on 
1 She was a Phantom of Delight (1S04). 



322 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

the Intimations of Immortality (1806), The White Doe 
ofRylstone (published in 1815), Laodamia (1814), and 
The Excursion (1814). This last composition forms 
only a part in a larger design, which embraced a long 
philosophical poem to be called The Recluse. In this 
poem the poet purposed to express his views on man, 
nature, and society. As an introduction to the work, 
he first wrote The Prelude (completed in 1805), an 
interesting autobiography with particular reference to 
his mental experiences and philosophical growth. The 
Excursion constitutes the second section of this work, 
in which various characters are introduced, furnishing 
a medium through which the poet's views find an ex- 
pression. Of the main poem, The Recluse^ intended 
to express the sensations and opinions of a poet living 
in retirement, only the first book was completed ; and 
it was not until 1888 that this fragment was published. 
When The Excursion appeared, it was little read ; 
only 500 copies were sold in the next six years. Then, 
little by little, appreciation grew. In 1815 the poet 
published his collected works, classifying them as 
Poems of the Imagination, Poems of the Fancy, Poems 
of Eeflection, etc. Sympathetic readers increased. 
In 1843, upon the death of Southey, then poet-laureate, 
Wordsworth was honored with the appointment in his 
place. 

In quiet retirement he lived out the days of a serene 
and uneventful life. He traveled somewhat, lived 
much in the open air, and composed industriously. 
The ardent poet of the Revolution had long since 
settled down into staid and safe conservatism. He 
died at the age of eighty, and was buried in his be- 
loved vale of Grasmere. 

The actual production of Coleridge's genius was 
disappqintingly small. In the winter of 1797 the poet 



THE LATER WOEK OF COLERIDGE 323 



wrote the first part o£ Cliristahel and tlie wonderfully 
melodious frao^ment of Kubla Khan, statins „^ , . 

& ' ^ & The Later 

that a poem two or three hundred lines m work of 
length had been composed by him during ^°^®"^se. 
sleep, that the fifty-four lines of the fragment were 
written immediately upon awaking, and that the in- 
terruption of a visit had effectually banished the 
remainder from his memory. This uncompleted poem, 
together with Christahel and The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner^ affords a remarkable example of tone effect, 
the subtle influence of which was understood by Cole- 
ridge as, perhaps, by no other English poet. Strongly 
impressed by the genius of Schiller, Coleridge pub- 
lished, in 1800, a masterly translation of the drama 
Wallenstein. The second part of Christahel was 
written in that same year, and in 1802 he composed 
the Ode to Dejection^ almost the last of his important 
poetical works. 

From 1803 to 1816 Coleridge was almost a wan- 
derer — without a recognized home, absent from his 
family, dependent upon friends, miserable over his 
failures, rarely accomplishing an occasional success. 
His great intellect was handicapped with a weak will, 
and his infirmity was aggravated by the fact that he 
had become an unhappy victim to the use of opium. 
Many important undertakings were planned, to be left 
half completed or wholly unattempted. The Friend^ 
a literary, moral, and political journal, which ran 
through twenty-seven numbers (1809-10), the lec- 
tures on Shakespeare and the poets, the Biographia 
Liter aria (1817), in which he analyzed the poetical 
theories of Wordsworth and published passages from 
his inimitable Table Talk, constitute, with the poems 
already named, the most important of his contributions 
to permanent literature. In 1816 Coleridge found an 



324 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



asylum in the hospitable home of a Mr. Oilman. He 
lived the life of a speculative student, devoted to the 
study and interpretation of the German philosopher 
Immanuel Kant. He died peacefully in 1834. 

Wordsworth stands by himself among the poets. 
Words- While it is common to associate the names 
worth's of Wordsworth and Burns, the resemblance 
Engiisii between the two is one of spirit, not of ex- 
Poetry. pression. In many essential points they are 
wholly unlike. Wordsworth gracefully and adequately 
describes his obligation to Burns — 

" Whose lig-ht I hailed when first it shone, 
And showed my youth 
How Verse may build a princely throne 
On humble truth." ^ 

Upon this foundation of " humble truth " the poetry of 
William Wordsworth was consistently and ever based. 
The intimate relations between Nature and Man he in- 
terpreted as no other poet ever tried to do. Instinc- 
tively and without effort; he fell into that blessed mood 
in which, . 

" With an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things." ^ 

" Every great poet is a teacher," he declared ; " I wish 
to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing." "To 
console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by 
making the happy happier, to teach the young and 
gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and 
therefore to become more actively and sincerely virtu- 
ous," ^ — this he affirmed to be the purpose of his art, 
and his hope for his verse. 

1 At the Grave of Burns (1803). 

2 Tintern Abbey. 

^ Letter to Lady Beaumont. See also the sonnet To B. R. Haydon, 
*' High is our calling, Friend." 



HIS CHOICE OF MATERIAL 325 



Hence it comes that Wordsworth is always sub- 
jective ; his poetry is the poetry of meditation and 
comisel ; his studies of nature and of human character 
are inspired with the idea of inculcating lessons of sym- 
pathy and love and faith. After that first turbulence 
of youthful ardor had given place to the calmer mood, 
the poet's spiritual life grew simple and serene. He 
deplored the fact that 

" Plain living and high thinking are no more ;" 

but this suggestive phrase truthfully describes the life 
he led. 

Simplicity is the essential characteristic of Words- 
worth's verse, — a simplicity that insists His Choice 
upon spontaneous expression and precludes °* Material, 
the artificial elaboration of an elaborate art. 

In his material as well as in his language he chose 
the common type. Like Chaucer and like Burns, he 
sang of the field daisy — 

" Nun demure of lowly port." 

The " little, humble Celandine " receives his praise. 
The tumultuous harmony of the nightingale is to him 
a song in mockery ; the stock-dove's homely tale con- 
tents him : he 

" Cooed and cooed; 
And somewhat pensively he wooed ; 
He sang of love with quiet blending, 
Slow to begin, and never ending ; 
Of serious faith and inward glee ; 
That was the song — the song for me ! " ^ 

In humble homes and hearts Wordsworth discovered 
elements that command respect and call forth admi- 
ration ; hence almost all his narrative pieces illus- 
trate and interpret some phase of the quiet life. He 
was oftenest impressed by the pathetic annals of the 

1 O Nightingale ! thou surely art. 



326 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



poor, and found a helpful lesson in the simplest tale. 
Michael, the Grasmere shepherd, 

" An old man, stout of heart, and strongs of limb," 

bowed, but not crushed b}^ his burden, proves that 
there is a comfort in the strength of love. The 
ancient leech-gatherer on the weary moor, searching 
muddy pools for his slimy spoil, replies cheerily to the 
poet's queries : — 

" Once I could meet with them on every side ; 
But they have dwindled long by slow decay ; 
Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may. 

I could have laughed myself to scorn to find 

In that decrepit Man so firm a mind. 

' God,' said I, ' be my help and stay secure ; 

I '11 think of the Leech-gatherer on the lonely moor.' " * 

The histories of Margaret and Ruth^ the simple nar- 
ratives of Lucy Gray and Alice Fell^ reflect the poet's 
ready sympathy in all the sorrows of the weak and 
young. As might be expected, Wordsworth took an 
intense interest in the unconscious wisdom of a child. 

The great significance of Wordsworth's work is 
Nature found in his attitude to nature. He does not 
merely describe her forms, nor does he study 
her various processes. To him nature is alive with 
an informing spirit which ever instructs, chastens, and 
elevates the thoughtful mind. Her kindlier phases im- 
press him wholly ; and thus the lessons that he brings 
are those of assurance, calmness, inspiration, and hope. 

" The Being that is in the clouds and air, 
That is in the green leaves among the groves, 
Maintains a deep and reverential care 
For th' unoffending creatures whom he loves." ^ 

It was natural that a soul so susceptible should feel 
the mystical power of nature's vital forces, — " the liv- 

^ Resolution and Independence. 
2 Hart-Leap Well. 



NATUKE 



327 



ing Presence of the Earth." ^ Even in his youth he 
was conscious of this influence.^ His poetry is full of 
allusions to the Vision and the Voice. A curious child 
listens to the murmurings of a smooth-lipped shell ; and 
the poet exclaims : — 

" Even such a shell the universe itself 
Is to the ear of Faith ; and there are times, 
I doubt not, when to you it doth impart 
Authentic tidings of invisible things." ^ 

In the enthusiasm of revolt against the conventional 
and artificial forms of the classic sch&ol, Wordsworth's 
early ballads are aggressive in their naive simplicity of 
style. There are many prosy passages of dubious verse 
in his later and longer compositions. And at the same 
time, allowing for his obvious limitations in breadth of 
expression and of view, we recognize a sane mind and a 
wealth of wonderful poetry in Wordsworth's collected 
works. Among the many definitions at various times 
attempted for that elusive term poetry^ there is one 
by Stedman which is as follows : — 

" Poetry is rhythmical, imaginative language, expressing 
the invention, taste, thought, passion, and insight of the 
human soul." ^ 

The suggestiveness of this definition is particularly 
helpful in estimating Wordsworth's place. For eleva- 
tion, serenity, and insight there are few compositions 
that surpass Tintern Abbey, Laodamia, the Ode to 
Duty^ TJie Intimations of Immortality, and l^'he Ex- 
cursion. 

1 Tlie Recluse. 

2 " Oh ye rocks and streams, 
And that still spirit shed from evening air ! 
Even in this joyous time I sometimes felt 
Your presence." — The Prelude, Book i. 

3 The Excursion, Book iv. 

* The Century Magazine, April, 1894. A lecture delivered at Colum- 
bia University. 



328 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



Poetical expression at the close of the eighteenth century 
Sugges- become a very different thing from what it 

tions for was at the beginning. The first aim, therefore, in 
Study. ^Yie study of Wordsworth's verse should be to re- 
cognize the direction and value of the progress that had been 
made. To understand this, examine a few of the early bal- 
lads, in which simplicity of thought and naturalness of expres- 
sion are strongly emphasized. Note the sort of subject which 
predominates, and think how far removed from Pope's con- 
ception of nature " methodised " is Wordsworth's 

" Simple Nature trained by careful Art." 

It is not necessary to impute a large intrinsic valae to all 
the representative compositions of the early period, but the 
sincerity and spontaneity are worthy of appreciation. Per- 
haps the happiest illustration of Wordsworth's method suc- 
cessfully applied is found in that little classic of childhood, 
We are Seven. 

We are Seven. The first stanza, containing the real 
thought of this simple tale, was suggested by Coleridge. The 
significance of the poem is, of course, its absolutely harmonious 
treatment of an entirely simple, yet impressive theme, — the 
inability of a child to comprehend the meaning of death. 
The ballad measure lends itself naturally to its development. 
The simple language, the colloquialisms, are in keeping ; the 
stockings and the kerchief, even the little porringer, are not 
unnecessary adjuncts. But the poetical effectiveness — that 
which makes of the composition a true poem — is the artless 
pathos of the little maid's reply, so naturally and truthfully 
interpreted by a sympathetic mind. 

TmTERN Abbey. The first important example of Words- 
worth's real genius was the poem composed near Tintern 
Abbey, the remarkable Lines on Revisiting the Banks of the 
Wye. Study the composition with reference to its theme, the 
spiritual effect of personal communion with nature. First 
analyze the poem. The introduction (lines 1-22) describes 
the return of the poet to this favored spot. What is the 
general subject of the passage which follows (lines 23-49) ? 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 329 



In the third section of the poem (lines 49-111) trace the 
development recorded through what Dowden has termed the 
periods " of the blood, of the senses, of the imagination, of 
the soul." How is each described ? To whom does the poet 
address himself in the conclusion ? Does the composition 
gain as a whole through this personal address ? 

The poem should now be read with careful reference to 
technical and artistic details. The blank-verse form should 
be considered. How does it comport with the general seri- 
ousness and dignity of the theme ? In structure of verse, 
disposition of pause, variation of rhythm, points of effective 
technique may be noted. A comparison may be made with 
passages in Paradise Lost and The Task. What is the 
effect of a comparison with the heroic couplet used by 
Pope? 

Next examine the diction of this poem. It will be found 
that the simplicity of these Lines is more impressive than 
that oftenest found in the ballads. It is elemental and upon 
a different plane. The " language of prose " gives place to 
the language of poetry ; a powerful imagination, powerfully 
excited, supplies the tropes and comparisons here introduced. 
Analyze the picture of the quiet landscape described in the 
opening lines. What points in that description emphasize 
the quiet seclusion of the scene ? How is its tranquilizing 
influence projected in the following passage ? What is the 
significance of the allusion to " that best portion of a good 
man's life" (lines 30-35)? Note each word used in the 
lines which f oUow and its individual aptness to the thought ; 
the compact suggestiveness of these lines is extraordinary. 

As opposed to the idea of quiet calm induced by the nat- 
ural influences of the scene, what phrases does the poet use 
to suggest the "fretful stir" of common life? Examine 
closely the language of the poet in the description of his 
youthful passion for nature ; what is the appropriateness of 
such phrases as " aching joys," " dizzy raptures " ? Com- 
mit to memory the passage beginning "For I have learned" 
(lines 88-102). Weigh the thought. Consider the force of 
each word in these lines : — 



330 FEOM WORDSWOKTH TO TENNYSON 



" The still sad music of humanity, 
Nor harsh nor grating-, though of ample power. 
To chasten and subdue." 

Follow on with the next line — and the next. Read them 
aloud. These passages belong to the " grand style " of gen- 
ius, whether it be called Shakespearian, Miltonic, or Words- 
worthian. 

Ode on the Intimations of Immortality. This 
poem, which Emerson characterized as " the high-water 
mark which the intellect has reached in this age," is not an 
argument but a reminder of this early consciousness and an 
enforcement of the common faith. The theme of the Ode, 
suggested in We are Seven, is the idea that the sense of im- 
mortality is incident to the conceptions of childhood ; that with 
development toward maturity this sense is more and more ob- 
scured, until it remains only in the dim recollection of what 
once was. The poem begins with a lyric passage (stanzas 
i.-iv.) descriptive of the poet's early sympathy with nature — 
the exj^erience reflected in so many of his compositions. The 
tone of melancholy is emphasized through contrast with the 
joyousness of children and the brightness of Nature herself : 
yet all repeat the tale ; the vision and the glory have fled. 
What is it that has disappeared ? The following section 
(stanzas v.-ix.) contains the philosophical development of the 
theme ; trace its development. Stanza vii., parenthetically 
illustrating the poet's theory, appears to have been sug- 
gested by young Hartley Coleridge, the poet's oldest child. 
The significance of this illustration does not appear until 
the question, Why with such earnest pains ? " (stanza viii.). 
What then is its application here ? Notice now the change 
of tone from regret to satisfaction as the poet advances 
(stanza ix.) the real thought of the Ode. Though fugitive 
and doubtful, these shadowy recollections 

" Are yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing ; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence." 



BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 



331 



The further application of this poetical idea is continued 
(stanzas x., xi.), and the poem ends with the note of convic- 
tion and gratitude. The Ode reveals an intense imagination 
expressing itself in a succession of exalted and impassioned 
figures. It gleams with 

" The light that never was on sea or land." 

It was not Wordsworth's intention seriously to teach the 
doctrine of preexistence, but to emphasize poetically one 
phase of our instinctive confidence in immortality. 

Read the poems referred to in the sketch of Wordsworth's 
life. Compare Michael, a pastoral poem, with Further 
one of Pope's Pastorals. Of the sonnets, study Reading, 
the following: The World is too much luith us, It is a 
Beauteous Evening Calm and Free, Composed on West- 
minster Bridge, To B. R. Haydon, Milton. Compare these 
sonnets with those of Milton and Shakespeare : what dis- 
tinction do you find in Wordsworth's ? Of the lyrical poems, 
read especially The Solitary Reaper, The Priinrose of the 
Rock, The Grave of Burns. Read at least Book i. of The 
Excursion. 

Among the texts of Wordsworth's poems, The Globe Edi- 
tion, edited by John Morley, is especially men- Bjjef BilDli- 
tioned. For classroom study, the Selections from ography. 
Wordsworth edited, with an essay, by Matthew Arnold, in 
the Golden Treasury Series, and the Selections edited by 
Edward Dowden (Ginn) are recommended. Number 76 of 
the Riverside Literature Series contains the Ode on the In- 
timations of Immortality and a number of the shorter poems. 
Knight's Life (Macmillan, 3 vols.) is a standard biography ; 
Myers's Wordsworth, in the English Men of Letters Series, 
is a good brief biography. The Prelude itself is an inter- 
esting autobiographical poem, and should not be overlooked. 
The essays on Wordsworth by James RusseU Lowell (A mong 
my Books) and by Walter Pater are themselves literature, 
and should be read. Augustus H. Strong's The Great Poets 
and their Theology contains an analysis of Wordsworth's 
teaching. An edition of Wordsworth's Prose Prefaces, 



332 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



edited by A. J. George (Heath), will be found helpful to an 
understanding of the poet's theory of versification. 

Closely associated in friendly relations with Words- 
Robert worth and Coleridge, and often included with 
Soutiiey, them as one of the Lake poets so called, 
1774-1843. ^g^g Robert Southey, who settled at Greta 
Hall, Keswick, in 1803 and there made his home until 
his death. Southey was born at Bristol, the son of a 
linen draper. While a student at Balliol College, Ox- 
ford, he caught the fever of radical republicanism like 
the other young enthusiasts of that revolutionary age. 
Here he was, visited by Coleridge and joined in the 
scheme to found a Pantisocracy on the Susquehanna, as 
described in the sketch of Coleridge. 

While a student he wrote much mediocre verse, in- 
cluding a poetical drama, Wat Tyler, extremely radi- 
cal in character and published, to the poet's annoyance, 
surreptitiously in 1817. His Joan of Arc, a spirited 
rendering of Schiller's great play, appeared in 1795, 
an offering to the revolutionary movement and expres- 
sive of its author's sympathy with the cause. After 
an unsuccessful attempt at the study of medicine, and 
a similar failure in the study of law, Southey settled 
down to a life of industrious, incessant authorship. 
As a poet he never rose to the level of his two famous 
contemporaries, although his romantic poems, Thalaba 
(1801), MadoG (1805), The Curse of Kehama (1810), 
and Roderick (1814) were, at least in part, successful 
enough to win him the honor of the laureateship in 
1813. His Life of Nelson, completed in that same 
year, is one of our best biographies ; and other of his 
narrative essays raise Southey to a high rank among 
prose writers. More methodical in his habits than some 
of his more gifted friends, his hospitable home sheltered 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 333 



the family of Coleridge and that of one other enthusiast 
in the Pantisocratic circle. Many honors and some 
wealth came to the poet in his later years, but his lit- 
erary fame rests rather upon the rich qualities of his 
prose than upon his verse, which to-day is but little read. 

n. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT IN ENGLISH FICTION: 
SCOTT. 

The first indications of a romantic tendency in Eng- 
lish fiction are found in a few works of the 
later eighteenth century novelists, among ^®s^^s:s. 
whom Horace Walpole (1717-97), the intimate friend 
of the poet Gray, and Mrs. Anne Radcliffe (1774- 
1823) are foremost. The Castle of Otranto, written 
by the former in 1764, was so far beyond the bounds 
of reason as to have suggested, and not implausibly, 
that its author, a man of taste and leisure, had in- 
tended his production as a satire rather than a novel. 
Howbeit, we have here a tale of sights and sounds 
uncanny ; dismal corridors echo to unearthly groans ; 
portraits speak ; underground passages form an impor- 
tant part of the machinery of the plot. The prominent 
characters disappear mysteriously, and as unexpect- 
edly reappear. There is in the castle courtyard a 
gigantic helmet whose black plumes nod ominously 
when messengers approach the place. The story is an 
attempt to describe the manners of the feudal period. 
With its crudity and extravagance, the novel stands 
as the first example of the so-called gothic romance 
in our literature. A stronger work than Walpole's 
romance is The History of the Caliph Vathek, by 
William Beckford. While more extraordinary in its 
wildness of fancy than The Castle of Otranto, the 
oriental setting of Vathek, its remarkable likeness to 
some tale among the thousand and one of the Arabian 



334 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



Nights^ above all, its careful consistency in the situa- 
tions and characters of the plot, have given to this tale 
a length of life shared by no other of these fantastic 
romances. The book was written in French while 
Beckford was traveling on the continent, and an Eng- 
lish translation was published without permission in 
1784. The climax of gothic romanticism was reached 
in the work of Mrs. Radcliffe, who published during 
the years 1789-97 five novels of mystery and terror, 
of which The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) was con- 
sidered the most impressive in its day. Under the in- 
fluence of this weird tale, Matthew Gregory Lewis 
published The Monk in 1795, a novel which became 
extremely popular and fixed its writer's name as 
" Monk " Lewis ever after. Lewis was strongly im- 
pressed by German romanticism ; he had met Goethe 
and had translated Schiller's Kohale und Liehe for 
the English stage. He wrote The Castle Spectre^ a 
musical drama, and an opera entitled Adelmorn the 
Outlaw. One of his best novels, The Bravo of Venice 
(1804), was based upon the robber drama, Abellino, 
of the German romanticist Zschokke. William God- 
win's Caleb Williams (1794) followed the method of 
the gothic romance, but subordinated its romanticism 
to a didactic purpose ; it embodied the spirit of the 
Revolution and was intended as a protest against the 
existing social order. 

These were the first expressions of the romantic, 
movement in English fiction. It was not until the ad- 
vent of Walter Scott that the romance proper reached 
the high level it has since maintained. 

Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 
1771. His father, whose name was also Walter, was 
a Writer to the Signet, or attorney at law. His pa- 
ternal ancestry contained many famous names. Walter 



CHILDHOOD 



335 



Scott, great grandfather of the novelist, was identified 
with the cause of the Stuarts, and it was -^^^gj 
from him, perhaps, that Sir Walter inher- Scott, 
ited that sentiment for the same cause so evi- 
dent in his work. Scott's father was a dignified and 
somewhat formal personage, He is portrayed in Red- 
gauntlet in the character of Alexander Fairford. The 
mother of the novelist was Anne Eutherford Scott, 
daughter of a professor in the University of Edinburgh. 
She was well educated, a woman of kindly nature and 
warm heart. 

Walter was the ninth of twelve children, and although 
unusually strong and athletic when a man, he Qj^jj^jj^^gg 
was sickly as a child. When two and a half 
years old, he was taken to his grandfather's farm at 
Sandyknowe, where he remained under the special care 
of his grandmother for several years. One of the old 
servants on the place afterward described him as " a 
sweet-tempered bairn, a darling with all about the 
house." Here the child grew rapidly strong ; al- 
though lame, he could clamber about with agility, and 
even while very young learned to gallop over the coun- 
try on a small Shetland pony of his own. Amid such 
surroundings Scott's taste for the ancient literature of 
his native Scotland developed early and was fostered 
by all the circumstances of his environment. Under 
the direction of his grandmother, whose memory was 
a treasure house of the past, he learned to read and to 
recite some of the old border poems, of which he grew 
passionately fond. On one occasion he declaimed the 
ballad of Hardicanute with such gusto that he quite 
put out the parish clergyman, who complained that he 
" might as well speak in a cannon's mouth as where 
that child was." The vivid imagination of the ro- 
mancer was manifested in the boy and roused the 



336 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



astonishment of his friends, A relative of the family 
saw him when six years old reading to his mother, and 
describes him thus : " He was reading a poem to his 
mother when I went in. I made him read on ; it was 
the description of a shipwreck. His passion rose with 
the storm. ' There 's the mast gone,' says he ; ' crash 
it goes ; they will all perish.' After his agitation he 
turns to me. ' That is too melancholy,' says he ; ' I had 
better read you something more amusing.' " 

In 1779 the eight-year-old lad came back to Edin- 
burgh and was placed in the High School, 
School Days, ^j^gj,^ made less of a reputation as a scholar 
than as a teller of tales to his comrades in the school. 
The spirit of his rough-and-ready ancestry was not want- 
ing in the youth ; he was a good fighter on occasion and 
bold enough in all boyish adventure. Although, as he 
says, he " glanced like a meteor from one end of the class 
to the other," meaning thereby a movement in the wrong 
direction, it is not to be inferred that he was either a 
dunce or an idler. With the books that he enjoyed he 
grew more than familiar. He absorbed the spirit as 
well as the words of the authors he loved. Some- 
thing of their enthusiasm and something of their pre- 
judice he assimilated also. Even as a boy Scott was 
a stanch, unyielding Tory, and took the side of the 
Cavaliers as against the Roundheads from a convic- 
tion that their creed was " the more gentlemanlike " of 
the two. Such were the characteristics of this preco- 
cious lad ; it is not difficult to see in them the possi- 
bility and promise of a Marmion and an IvanJioe. 

About 1785 or 1786 Scott entered his father's office 
Profes- study law, supplementing his office study 

sionai Ca- with courses in the law school of the Univer- 
sity. He worked on thus for six or seven years, 
with more or less perseverance, though with no great 



LITEKARY LABORS 



337 



enthusiasm for his profession. As occasion offered, tlie 
young attorney made excursions into the Highlands and 
met some of the characters afterward introduced in the 
tales. He also joined the yeomanry, or militia, and 
thus gained acquaintance with military matters. In 
1792 he was admitted to the bar. 

On Christmas eve, 1797, the young advocate was 
married to Miss Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, or 
Charpentier, as the name originally stood, a lady of 
French parentage, although reared and educated in 
England. Soon afterward Scott was made sheriff 
of Selkirkshire and rented Ashestiel, a country house 
on the Tweed. In 1806 he assumed the duties of one 
of the Clerks of Session, but did not enjoy the salary 
of this oface, £1300, untn 1811. 

Scott's entrance upon a literary career began with 
the publication -of some translations from the Literary 
newer romantic poetry of Germany. In 1799 Laijors. 
he published a version of Goethe's Goetz von Berlich- 
ingen. In 1800 he wrote the Eve of St. John^ a bor- 
der ballad, and in 1805 appeared his first poem of note, 
The Lay of the Last 3Iinstrel. This was followed 
hj Marmion in 1808, The Lady of the Lake in 1810, 
The Vision of Don Roderich in 1811, and Rohehy in 
1813. But this was not all : along with other poems 
of lesser note, Scott also did an extraordinary amount 
of editorial work during this period, including editions, 
with biographies, of Dryden and Swift. His metrical 
romances, the best of their kind ever written, made their 
author the most popular writer of his day. The his- 
tory of the Scottish borders was rich in material suited 
to the purpose of the romancer, and Scott, thoroughly 
familiar with the customs and traditions of his native 
land, happily endowed with a sentiment and a sympa- 
thy for his subject, was remarkably well qualified to 



338 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



thus revive the spirit of the past. The poet found 

himself famous and wealthy. In 1811 he bought Ab- 

botsford — forever afterward associated with his name 

— an estate on the banks of the Tweed about thirty 

miles from Edinburgh. 

In 1812 Lord Byron published the first two cantos 

„^ „ , of Childe Harold's Pilqrimaqe. and fol- 
The Novels. . ^ ' 

lowed these m the next year with The Giaour 

and The Bride of Ahydos. There was therefore now a 
new poet in the field. Mohehy had not proved so suc- 
cessful as the earlier poems, and after two further ven- 
tures in The Bridal of Triermain, 1813, and The Lord 
of the Isles, 1815, Scott quietly withdrew from the field 
of verse and opened a vein of imaginative creation the 
like of which had never before been discovered in Eng- 
lish literature. In 1814 appeared TFat'erZey ; or,'Tis 
/Sixty Years Since, a novel of manners and adventure 
in Scotland during the period indicated by the title. 
This was indeed an event in English letters, and the 
" author of Waverley," who rigorously concealed his 
identity, until secrecy finally became impossible, found 
himself for a second time the success of the hour. Guy 
Mannering followed in 1815, " the work of six weeks 
at Christmas time ; " then came in quick succession 
The Antiquary, The Blach Dwarf, Old Mortality, all 
in 1816, Roh Boy, The Heart of Midlothian, 1817, 
The Bride of Lammermoor, 2indi The Legend of Mon- 
trose, 1819. During this last year the novelist suffered 
intensely with a malady of the stomach which caused 
an agony of pain, " but," as he wrote afterward to a 
friend with reference to his sufferings at this time, " I 
have no idea of these things preventing a man from 
doing what he has a mind." When The Bride of Lam- 
merrtioor was completed, however, Scott declared that 
he did not recollect one single incident, character, or 



LATER YEARS 



339 



conversation it contained, so severe and so continuous 
had been the pain which had tormented him throughout 
its dictation. 

The year 1819 marks a slight departure in Scott's 

selection of subiects. Hitherto he had con- , ^ 

*' . . Ivannoe. 

fined himself to the field of Scottish history 

and Scottish character, a field where he felt himself 
perfectly at home ; he now tried an " experiment on a 
subject purely English," and with gratifying success. 
Ivanhoe^ if not the greatest, is probably the most popu- 
lar of all his works. As a romance of chivalry, pic- 
turesque, brilliant, absorbing, vivid in its portrayal of 
the jarring adjustment of Norman and Saxon, Ivanhoe 
remains, in spite of the criticism inspired by the melo- 
drama of its action, unsurpassed by any work of fiction 
with which it can be appropriately compared. No one 
impressed by the scope of the imagination displayed in 
its pages, the rapidity of its movement, or its freshness 
of tone would suspect that the author while engaged 
upon its creation was racked with physical pain ; yet 
such was the fact, for at the time of its creation Scott 
was still a sufferer from the malady already referred to. 

In 1820 Scott was made a baronet, the first person 
thus honored by George IV. after his acces- ^ater 
sion to the throne. At Abbotsford he lived 

)- the life of a Scottish laird, hospitable, industrious, 
busying himself with official duties and displaying a 
capacity for work that has hardly been equaled. Along 
with memoirs, essays, and translations continued to 
appear the successive volumes of the Waverley novels, 
including Kenihuorth^ 1821, The Pirate, The Fortunes 
of Nigel ^ and Peveril of the Peah, 1822, Quentin 
Durward, 1823, St. Ronari's Well aud Pedgaimtlet, 
1824, The Betrothed and The Talisman, 1825, and 
Woodstocli, 1826. 



340 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



This last year was a disastrous one for the Laird. 
In 1805 he had become a silent partner in the printing 
and publishing firm of the Ballantynes ; he was also 
financially involved with Constable, the publisher of 
the novels. There was evident mismanagement on all 
sides, and in 1826 both firms collapsed, leaving Sir 
Walter under a load of debt which he bore heroically 
till his death. The amount of the obligations assumed 
by Scott was about ^£130, 000. He turned over to 
trustees his property at Abbotsford and set bravely to 
work to discharge the debt. He was fifty-five years 
old and subject to the attacks of a new disorder, which 
struck at the brain and eventually caused paralysis. 
The story of the next few years is full of pathos. 
Within two years' time he had earned nearly X40,000, 
j618,000 having come from the sales of a Life of Na- 
poleon Bonaparte. In February, 1830, the novelist 
had a stroke of paralysis, but still he struggled on at 
his task. On September 23, 1831, too late to regain 
his shattered health, Scott left Abbotsford for a trip 
to Italy, seeking rest. He sailed from Portsmouth for 
the Mediterranean upon a frigate placed by the Govern- 
ment at his disposal, visited Malta, Naples, and Eome, 
and then began to long for home. In May the party 
started to return, traveling down the Rhine to Rotter- 
dam, where the almost dying man was placed on an 
English steamboat, arriving in London, June 13, 1832. 
Here he rallied and, though very weak, at his urgent 
desire was brought home to Abbotsford, recognizing 
familiar scenes and greeting with a cry of delight the 
first view of its cherished towers. Foremost among the 
old friends eager to extend a greeting were his favorite 
dogs, and Sir Walter smiled or sobbed as they fawned 
about him and licked his hand. 

Scott lived two months after his return. On Sep- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY OF IVANHOE 341 



tember 17, in an interval of consciousness, he called his 
son-in-law to the bedside and said : " Lockhart, I may 
have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a 
good man — be virtuous — be religious — be a good 
man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when 
you come to lie here." Four days later, September 21, 
1832, Sir Walter died. He was buried in Dryburgh 
Abbey, where for many generations his ancestors had 
been laid. His death was regarded as a national loss, 
and unprecedented honors were paid to his memory. 

The terrible task, under the strain of which he at last 
succumbed, was not accomplished during the novelist's 
lifetime, although by his sacrificing labor the debt was 
reduced more than one half in the six years of ceaseless 
toil. The remainder of the debt was more than cov- 
ered by the royalties from his books, and within a few 
years after his death Sir Walter's account was clear. 

IvANHOE. First of all, let the fact be emphasized that 
the novel or romance is created primarily not to 
be made an object of study, but to afford pleasure tions for 
to its reader. In some works of fiction the pur- Study 
pose to entertain is more obvious than in others. 
In Ivanhoe, as in aU of Scott's novels, that purpose is para- ♦ 
mount, and our first reading of it should not be so minutely 
attentive to technical features that we shall be robbed of our 
entertainment and lose what was intended by the author — 
our pleasure in the story. And yet, as a matter of fact, that 
enjoyment will naturally be intensified if at the same time 
we feel the value of the work as a whole and note here and 
there the evidence of skillful construction and artistic effect. 
These waymarks of genius we may be conscious of as we 
pass, and a more careful examination will increase our ap- 
preciation and heighten our pleasure. Herein is the jus- 
tification for subsequent study of the work, a study which 
should result not only in a more intense feeling of the 
effects designed, but also to a greater or less degree in the 
apprehension of how those effects have been achieved. 



342 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



In the study of any novel we may begin by noting the 
The Setting ^^'^^ '^'^9 situation. The first has to do 

and the with the general environment, the characteristics 
Situation. ^£ ^^^^^^ place, the date and scene of action ; 
the second deals with the conditions which involve the prin- 
cipal persons in the narrative, and presents the groundwork 
or starting-point from which the story springs. Either of 
these may be placed before the reader first, or something of 
both may be made to appear, the details of each unfolding 
coincidently. In what we may call the Introduction of 
Ivanhoe, the principal points of the setting are clearly and 
briefly given in the first five paragraphs of chapter-!; ; and 
although, in the paragraphs following, some further details 
are added which make more vivid the political and social 
order of the kingdom, it transpires that these further facts 
are given as necessary to our knowledge of the situation. 
Thus Wamba's discourse upon the meats reveals something 
of the relative position of Norman and Saxon, together with 
the personal relations naturally existing between them ; and 
this constitutes a most important force in the development 
of the romance. The allusions to Cedric and Front-de-Boeuf 
are incident^-l to the situation, for these persons are promi- 
nent in the story. With the introduction of the Prior and 
the Templar (chapter ii.) our acquaintance with the situa- 
tion grows ; the personal allusions to Cedric, Rowena, and 
particularly the mention of the son banished " for lifting his 
eyes in affection " toward the lady, are most important. In 
chapter iii. the utterance of Cedric concerning Wilfred, and 
the statement of Rowena's interest in news from Palestine, 
confirm the assertion of the Prior ; while the lady's champi- 
onship of Ivanhoe (chapter v.), and the description of the 
Palmer's nocturnal visit to Rowena, make our understanding 
of the situation complete. Lady Rowena is obviously the 
heroine of the novel ; between herself and the absent Ivan- 
hoe exists an attachment the progress of which is hindered 
by the hostility of the arbitrary Thane who has disowned 
his son, and which is also threatened by the hate of the 
Knight Templar, who from the outset assumes the part of 



THE PLOT 



343 



an evil element in the story just opening. The situation 
also involves the peculiar social antagonisms of Norman and 
Saxon, the pretensions of Prince John, and the cause of King 
Richard ; while the reception accorded to Isaac of York, and 
his interview with the Palmer, indicate that he also has a 
part to play in the romance. 

The situation once made clear, we are in a position to fol- 
low with greater interest the development of the ^^^^ 
story, and this development is made manifest in 
the working out of what is called the plot. This last is no- 
thing more than the thread of logical connection on which 
are strung the happenings that furnish the forces, the mo- 
tives, and the action necessary to the growth of the story. In 
some novels the plot is simple ; few characters are involved, 
the motives are plain, a single idea commands our interest. 
Here in Ivanhoe a half dozen important personages demand 
attention at the start and as many more appear later as 
secondary yet prominent figures. Primarily we are inter- 
ested in the fortunes of Rowena and Ivanhoe, even when the 
identity of the latter is but suspected ; at the same time our 
interest is aroused in other groups and in the forces which 
dominate them. Suppose we tabulate the more important 
characters of Ivanhoe; they seem to fall naturally into groups 
like these : — 



1. 


2. 


3. ^ 






Prince John, 


Ivanhoe 


Cedric 


Fitzurse, 


and 


and 


and 


Rowena. 


Athelstane. 


De Bracy. 




Robin Hood 


Front-de-Bceuf 


King 


and 


and 


Richard. 


Friar Tuck. 


Malvoisin. 


Rebecca 


Gurth 


Bois-Guilbert 


and 


and 


and 


Isaac. 


Wamba. 


the Templars. 



That is to say : (1) those who, because of their situation. 



344 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

directly or indirectly appeal to our sympathy; the actual 
hero and heroine, who are contending with the traditional 
difficulties that beset the path of lovers in romance ; the 
chivalrous king, vigorously conspired against by unnatural 
foes ; and the Jew, an object of general persecution and con- 
tempt, associated with his daughter who, through her beauty 
of person and character, divides affection and honor with the 
heroine herself ; (2) the Saxons, more or less independent, 
more or less aggrieved ; (3) the Normans, conspirators politi- 
cally and personally hostile to the hero. 

Now if the highest artistic success is to be attained, the 
threads which carry the fortunes of these individual groups 
must be so closely interwoven that they shall visibly form 
one single strand. We must be made aware that these ele- 
ments, hostile and congenial, conciliatory and discordant, 
compose a society which by their existence, and only by 
their existence, is complete ; that the tendencies and incli- 
nations here presented must inevitably act and react as 
described, and that though badly tangled at the start, the 
skein will prove to be properly in order at the end. Such is 
the problem of the plot ; it is for us to discover, if we may, 
by what devices that result is accomplished. 

In the first place, how is the structural unity, perhaps the 
Unity of most important as it is the most difficult essential 
tlie Plot. in such a plot, to be obtained ? Chiefly by show- 
ing that the interests of all the groups individually centre 
in the interests of one group, which naturally is the impor- 
tant group of the narrative, — that comprising the hero and 
the heroine of the romance. Now let the reader watch for 
the links in the narrative that bind these groups together, 
and prove for himself whether or not the bonds that unite, 
them are natural and sufficiently strong to secure the unity 
required. 

The development of the plot takes place in a series of 
Scenes scenes. It would be well to make a list of these 
scenes in order, together with the chapters occu- 
pied by each. Naturally the more elaborate, the more pic- 
turesque scenes are impressed most vividly on the mind ; and 



SCENES 



345 



if one were asked to enumerate the successive scenes of Ivaw- 
hoe, the list would probably run like this : — 

1. The Forest near Rotherwood. 

2. The Hall and Mansion of Rotherwood. 

3. The Lists at Ashby. 

4. The Hermit's Hut of Copmanhurst. 

5. The Castle of Torquilstone. 

6. The Trusting Tree. 

7. Templestowe. 

8. The Castle of Coningsburgh. 

9. The Lists of Templestowe. 

Now while the scenes mentioned are indeed prominent 
ones, the list is by no means complete. Several of these 
may be subdivided. There is reaUy a change of scene when, 
though still in the forest, Gurth and Wamba are joined by 
the Prior and his companions ; and this new scene is clearly 
marked by its separation in chapter ii. Similarly, a new 
scene is created by the entrance of Cedric's guests recorded 
in chapter iv., although the location of the scene is pre- 
cisely that of the former chapter, namely, Cedric's hall. 
The same change occurs with Isaac's entrance in chapter 
v., and the reader will in each case note the close of the 
preceding chapter for the announcement of the new event. 
The chapter divisions, however, do not always correspond to 
the succession of scenes. In chapter vi., for example, we 
have, j&rst, the scene between the Palmer and the cup-bearer ; 
second, that in the apartment of Rowena ; third, the brief 
interview with Anwold ; fourth, the morning call on Isaac ; 
fifth, the rousing of Gurth ; sixth, the journey toward Shef- 
field. A scene, therefore, is a section of the narrative which, 
through the presence of the characters introduced, the con- 
versation recorded, or the action described, is in dramatic 
effect complete. 

The various scenes should be classified. Some are of 
value as presenting portraits of the persons concerned, some 
contain the germ from which subsequent action is to spring, 
some are apparently designed for contrasts and relief, as the 



346 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

quiet forest scene (chapter xxxii.), and others for spec- 
tacular effect. In some scenes the action sets rapidly for- 
ward ; in others it is almost stationary. Occasionally the 
author is compelled to go back in his narrative in order to 
pick up some thread of the action or to explain a situation 
which might otherwise be obscure. Note the symmetrical 
arrangement of scenes running through chapters xxi.-xxxi, 
which narrate the siege of Torquilstone. 

An important element in the scene is the incident, or 

, event which supplies the motive for the action of 

Incidents. ^ ^ 

the scene. In these two fields, the arrangement 

of scene and the invention of incident, the story-teller's power 
is severely tested. Just as the scene must contribute natu- 
rally and directly to the action of the plot, so must the inci- 
dents that enliven it occur spontaneously and at least cause 
no digression from the strict line of plot construction — an 
extravagance which the economy of novel-writing cannot 
permit. The incidents of any important scene may be tabu- 
lated and examined. With regard to the probability of 
incidents, it should be stated that more latitude is allowed 
the romancer than is granted to the realistic novelist. A 
romance frankly assumes that things shall be done in the 
large. An amount of hyperbole in deeds as well as in words 
is expected ; the atmosphere is one of adventure and daring ; 
the extraordinary and marvelous are in order ; rare beauty 
and heroism are demanded ; the superlative prevails. At 
the same time there is a limit set by good taste and experi- 
ence, and if the story-teller oversteps that, he will fall into 
the ditch of the mock-heroic and the absurd. There are a 
number of incidents in Ivanhoe that should be tested in this 
regard ; the student will have no difficulty in selecting them. 

In the invention and combination of incidents all degrees 
of artistic skill are shown. Let us examine, with- reference 
to this point, the incidents set forth in chapters i. and ii. 
We have, first, the two thralls of Cedric fraternizing in the 
forest, watching the swine. The attempt to collect the scat- 
tered herd with the poor assistance of Fangs serves to bring 
out several facts of importance relative to Norman rule. 



CLIMAX 



347 



including Wamba's discourse on the meats. The second 
incident is the approach of travelers, announced by the tram- 
pling of their horses. The third is the threat of coming 
storjn. These incidents are all preparatory to the scene in 
the hall at Rotherwood ; let the student trace to the end the 
chain of incidents thus begun. The manifest purpose of the 
author is to account for the assembly of characters who meet 
eventually in Cedric's mansion. What is served by these 
preliminary incidents ? Would it not have been as well to 
raise the curtain on the scene presented in chapter iii., or is 
there a propriety and order in the arrangement as it stands ? 
Let each one of these incidents be studied in turn. What is 
the degree of probability in each ? Is the logical connection 
clear ? What is the force of each in shaping subsequent 
action ? Note particularly the usefulness of the storm, and 
consider how much of what occurs is directly attributable to 
its agency. Not only should these points be noted by the 
student, but he should feel their comparative value in stimu- 
lating interest and in heightening suspense. Sir Walter 
was not always so happy in his introductions as here, and it 
might be well to compare these opening chapters with those 
of his first novel, Waverley, to emphasize the point. 

The incidents should be so arranged as to permit no 
dropping of interest ; if possible, each should be ^^^^ 
more striking than the one preceding. As the 
story proceeds these climaxes become an important matter. 
There is a fine example of dramatic effect in climax in 
chapter v. when the Palmer meets the imputations of the 
Templar with the words "Second to none! " Study this 
incident with considerable care ; see how unexpected and 
how forceful it is ; then note how interest is quickened by 
Rowena's championship of Ivanhoe, after which the com- 
pany soon separates and the chapter ends. A similar study 
should be made of the climaxes in the scenes at Ashby and 
at Templestowe, both in their immediate connection and in 
their relation to the final climax of the novel — the recon- 
ciliation of Cedric aud the marriage of Ivanhoe. 

Finally, the characters demand our study. What touches 



348 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

of true nature do we find — what marks of unreal portraiture, 
The if ^T^J ? Words and actions may be inconsistent 

Characters, with the nature and endowment of the character 
as conceived : do you then find the sincere expression of 
actual personality, or is the characterization obviously arti- 
ficial and unreal ? Always remembering the larger liberty 
of romance, what deeds, if any, seem incredible and likely 
to detract from the probability of the story ? Perhaps the 
propensities for evil are exaggerated : can parallels of the 
more startling acts of cruelty be found in fact? Compare 
these portraitures with history and with similar attempts in 
other fiction. Study Shakespeare's King John and also his 
Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Do you think that 
f Scott's characters show traces of Shakespeare's influence ? 
Note the author's skill in the treatment of Richard. Ivan- 
hoe is the hero of the novel, and therefore should not be pre- 
sented as inferior to the best, but neither should the king 
appear to less advantage than his knight. Do you think it 
more appropriate that the Jester should sound the blast which 
summons the outlaws (chapter xl.) than that Richard should ? 
Is it not an artistic touch therefore that permits Wamba to 
steal the bugle from the king ? What other incidents reveal 
the art of the novelist in this respect ? Still more delicate is 
the relation between the two women, Rowena and Rebecca. 
What is your impression concerning Scott's treatment of 
these two characters in personality, appearance, and influence ? 

In the more mechanical handling of his characters it is 
important to note the author's practice in several particulars. 
How does he get them before us ? Are any of the important 
figures in Ivanhoe brought directly on the scene without pre- 
vious mention ? Study the careful preparation for Rowena's 
first appearance and note how effective is the actual intro- 
duction. In what degree are the characters self-revealing ? 
How far is description necessary ? When descriptive pas- 
sages of some length do occur, is there evidence of skill in 
planning and placing them ? In some cases disguise is evi- 
dent — there is some degree of mystery involved. In such 
instances how complete is the disguise so far as the reader is 



BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 



349 



concerned ? Is it wise to attempt utterly to conceal identity 
in fiction ? May it not add to the interest in most cases to 
indulge the reader in a growing suspicion of the truth ? Note 
the stages in the identification of the Black Knight. How is 
the effect of climax heightened when the Knight reveals 
himself among the outlaws ? 

Another interesting line of study on the characters is 
to note the counter-play of influence. Chapter xxxiv. is 
good material for such examination. The working of char- 
acter on character is well brought out in the scene between 
Prince John, De Bracy, and Fitzurse. Note also the ruling 
motives displayed by each person in the story, for example, 
in Bois-Guilbert, in Isaac, in Cedric, and in Athelstane. 
Now it is easy enough to depict a " ruling motive," but it is 
not so easy to blend and harmonize it with the infinite variety 
of tendencies and motives that enter into human nature and 
give to the individual a complete and consistent personality 
of his own. It is neither caricature nor allegory that the 
novelist created, but living men and women. How far in this 
respect do you think our novelist has succeeded ? In this 
connection it would be well to compile a " List of Characters 
in Ivanhoe,^^ to consider the distinctness and individuality of 
portraiture. Suppose you number the characters in the next 
novel you happen to read and make comparisons in this 
regard with Scott. When in addition to the characters o£ 
this romance we take into our count those of equal merit 
presented in his other novels, we arrive, perhaps, at a fairer 
estimate of the real genius of this Wizard of the North than 
in any other way. 

Such is the line of study suggested for the reader of Ivan- 
hoe. A similar course may be followed with other novels, 
as the student's interest may direct. A novel really worth 
reading is worth studying. In no other way will its artistic 
value be felt. 

The Life of Scott by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is 
the aiithoritative biography. The Journal of Sir grief Bibll- 
Walter Scott covers the period of his later life, ography. 
The General Preface to the edition of the Waverley Novels 



350 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

(1829) is full of interesting autobiography concerning his 
youth. Sir Walter Scott in the English Men of Letters 
Series, by R. H. Hutton, is the best short biography. The 
Life of Scott in the Great Writers Series, by C. D. Yonge, 
contains an extended bibliography. Recollections of Sir 
Walter Scott, by R. P. Gillis, and Domestic Manners and 
Private Life of Sir Walter Scott, by James Hogg, are of 
lighter character. Ahhotsford, by Washington Irving, is a 
pleasant sketch of the novelist in his home. Scott (in 
Encyclopcedia Britannica), by William Minto, and Scott 
(in Chambers's Encyclopoedia), by Andrew Lang, are author- 
itative and concise. Robin Hood, by Ritson, and The Old 
English Ballads in any standard collection, such as Percy's 
Reliques, or vol. v. of Child's English and Scottish Ballads, 
will furnish interesting material on the outlaws of Sherwood 
Forest. The Waverley Dictionary, by May Rogers, con- 
tains an alphabetical arrangement of all the characters in 
the Waverley Novels, with a descriptive analysis of each 
character. 



III. THE REVOLUTIONARY POETS : BYRON, SHELLEY. 

Born in the period of social upheaval which closed 
the century, passing in boyhood through those 
ence of the years of strife and turmoil which accompanied 
Time. Revolution, two great English poets, Byron 

and Shelley, appear at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century as the real representatives of that epoch in 
English verse. The older poets had early lost the 
glow of their first enthusiasm and had gradually settled 
into the conservatism of established institutions ; but 
Byron and Shelley were thoroughly inflamed with the 
spirit of revolt, a spirit which lent ardor to their verse 
and not infrequently broke forth in the experiences 
of their strenuous, troubled lives. 

George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London 
April 19, 1788. His ancestry was not auspicious. 



HARKOW AND CAMBRIDGE 



351 



John, his father, was a libertine, and went hy the 
nickname of "Mad Jack." The poet's un- LordByron, 
cle, William, was known as "the wicked 1788-1824. 
lord ; " and his grandfather had committed murder. 
Byron's mother, Catherine Gordon, a native of the 
Highlands, and excessively proud of her descent from 
James I., was an impulsive, hysterical woman, whose 
influence over her young son was anything but helpful. 
Her property had been squandered by her husband, 
who had deserted her and was living in France when 
their child was born. During the poet's boyhood 
mother and son lived at Aberdeen, until in 1798 Byron 
came to his inheritance and took possession of the 
ancestral estate of Newstead Abbey in Nottingham- 
shire. In the following summer young Byron entered 
a school in London. His mother accompanied him, 
her presence proving disastrous to the happiness of 
both. In her moods of affection and anger she was 
equally unreasoning and extravagant. From petting 
she would fly into fits of passionate abuse. Byron 
was early conscious of his mother's weak and irrespon- 
sible character ; once when a school fellow exclaimed 
impatiently, " Your mother 's a fool," the boy replied 
quietly and rather to his comrade's surprise, " I know 
it." The effects of such an ancestry and such influ- 
ences upon the moral development of Byron could not 
have been insignificant. 

The years 1801-5 were spent at the famous public 
school of Harrow, where the young lord came Harrow and 
under the wholesome discipline of a wise and Cambridge, 
excellent master, whom he later described as " the 
best, the kindest (yet strict, too) friend I ever had." 
Byron was not a hard student, but he read eagerly, 
learned a little German, and more French ; Italian he 
seems to have mastered. At Harrow and at Cam- 



352 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

bridge, whither he went in 18C5, he was passionately- 
fond of athletics, in spite of the clubfoot, in regard to 
which he was morbidly sensitive. His handsome, mel- 
ancholy face, his aristocratic, haughty spirit, his reck- 
less daring, his genius, and his dissipation had made 
Byron a conspicuous and not unattractive figure at the 
University when, in 1807, he published his first volume 
of verse, entitled Hours of Idleness. There was no- 
thing of particular promise in these early poems faith- 
fully cast in the mould of Pope's heroic couplets ; nor 
were they of sufficient importance, perhaps, to justify 
the sharp criticism of the Edinburgh reviewers, who 
vigorously assailed the book on its appearance. The 
point of their criticism was fair enough. The young 
poet's affectation of misanthropy was especially dis- 
agreeable. What was to be thought of a boy who 
expressed himself cynically in lines like these : — 

" Weary of love, of life, devoured with spleen, 
I rest, a perfect Timon, not nineteen ; " 

or who offered, as an epitaph upon a favorite dog, 
this : — 

" To mark a friend's remains these stones arise. 
I never knew but one, and here he lies " ? 

In the spring of 1809 Byron took his seat in the 
English House of Lords. It was a mere formality, 
Bards. neccssary to the recognition of his hereditary 
privileges. Byron's real emergence into public life 
came with the appearance of his satirical poem, Eng- 
lish Bards and Scotch Remewers^ which was published 
a few days after the formal assumption of his parlia- 
mentary rights. The poem was at first anonymous ; 
then a second edition followed with the author's name. 
In his own words, the young poet woke to find himself 
famous. The attack upon Jeffrey and Brougham was 
generally enjoyed and especially relished by those who 



THE METRICAL ROMANCES 



353 



had suffered from their often brutal criticism. Byron 
paid his respects to his contemporaries in this satire, 
ridiculing Scott, whose Lay of the Last Ilinstrel had 
appeared in 1805 and Marmion in 1808 ; Words- 
worth he characterized as " an idiot " who 

" Both by precept and example shows 
That prose is verse and verse is only prose." 

In June of the same year (1809) Byron left Eng- 
land upon an extended tour which lasted 
about two years and fed the imagination of 
the poet with romance and adventure. Byron's travels 
extended as far as the Orient ; the story of the jour- 
ney is told in the long poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrim- 
age^ and some experiences furnished material for the 
later work, Don Juan. In 1811, at news of his mo- 
ther's illness, he returned to England, but just too late 
to see her alive. 

The first two cantos of Lord Byron's most important 
work, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage., appeared ^j^^jyjg^ 
in 1812. In spite of the faults and affecta- ricai 
tions which mar all of his more prominent com- 
positions, this poem ranks among the great productions 
of English verse ; and its place was speedily recognized. 
There is wonderful virility in the poetry of Byron at 
his best, an energy and passion that are irresistible ; 
his verse is fluent and melodious, his descriptive pas- 
sages vivid and brilliant. The popular success of these 
cantos was repeated in the series of briefer romances 
which followed. Within three years, with astonishing 
rapidity, he published The Giaour (pronounced Jour')^ 
The Bride of Ahydos, Tlie Corsair^ Lara., The Siege 
of Corinth., and Parisina. The extravagance of 
early romanticism, the romanticism of " Monk " Lewis 
and Mrs. Radcliffe, found an echo in these melo- 
dramatic tales. Against the dark background of the 



354 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

poet's cynicism and melancholy was developed the 
plot of oriental intrigue and lurid adventure. There 
was little variation except the mere change of scene 
from harem to pirate's cave or outlaw's camp. The 
same dark-browed, gloomy hero appeared in all — and 
enthusiastic readers saw in that hero the personality 
of the poet, ascribing the adventures and intrigues of 
the poems to Byron himself. These romances were 
immensely popular ; 14,000 copies of The Corsair sold 
in one day. The success of The Giaour determined 
Scott to abandon the field of metrical romance and 
led, indirectly, to the publication of Waverley in the 
following year. The relations between the two poets 
had become very friendly. Byron apologized to Scott 
for his attack in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers^ 
and each paid unselfish tribute to the genius of the 
other. 

In 1815 Byron married a Miss Milbanke. The 
union proved unhappy, and within a year his 
Marriage. ^.^^ ^^^^ sorts of scandals were 

reported. The public papers attacked him. A gen- 
eral spirit of hostility developed against the poet, 
finally driving him out of England, and pursuing him 
wherever he went. 

With Byron's departure in 1816 a distinct epoch 
^ ^^^^ begins in his career. The rest of his life was 
spent almost wholly in Italy. On his way 
through Switzerland he gathered much material for his 
poems, and at Geneva first met Shelley. He settled at 
Venice. Here he wrote the third and fourth cantos of 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage^ including the brilliant 
passages upon Waterloo, Napoleon, and the Rhine. 
During his residence in Italy, Byron produced an im- 
portant series of dramatic poems, of which Manfred 
(1817) and Cain (1821) are the best. Upon the long 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



355 



satirical poem Don Juan the poet was occupied from 
1819 to 1824. This last work aroused, uot without 
justice, a storm of condemnation. " In Don Jxiaii^' 
says Byron, " I take a vicious and unprincipled charac- 
ter and lead him through those ranks of society whose 
accomplishments cover and cloak their vices, and paint 
the natural effects." But the poem is an expression of 
Byron's revolutionary sentiments, which were too radical 
for that age, or for this. 

Nothing in Byron's life so well became him as the 
manner of his leaving it. His wonderful ^.j^g Qtx^^\i 
energy would not permit him to be a merely Revolution, 
passive observer amid movements and efforts with 
which he so strongly sympathized. He had already 
allied himself to the Italian revolutionists and was a 
member of the Carbonari at the outbreak of the Greek 
Revolution in 1821. The fortunes of Greece in her 
struggle for independence against the Turks interested 
the poet profoundly. He determined to take a personal 
part in the revolution, and in July, 1823, set forth from 
Genoa, taking £4000 of his own money to contribute 
to the cause. He was received with enthusiasm by the 
Greeks and appointed to lead a force of Suliotes in an 
attack upon Lepanto ; but delays and difficulties multi- 
plied, his health became undermined, and while drilling 
his command in the malarial region about Mesolonghi, 
lie was attacked by fever, from the effects of which he 
died April 19, 1824. 

The poetry of Lord Byron is in striking contrast to that 
of Wordsworth. The calm and meditative tone gugggg. 
of the older poet is the very antithesis of the ardent tlons for 
energy of the younger. The " primal sympathy " ^^^^y- 
with nature and man, the wholesome ojDtimistic philosophy 
of Wordsworth is met by the rebellious cynicism and obtru- 
sive egotism of Byron. His poetry is always spirited bat 



356 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

never spiritual. At the same time Byron's vital vigor is 
most impressive ; his verse is aflame with passion. 

" The cold in dime are cold in blood, 

Their love can scarce deserve the name ; 
But mine was like the lava flood 

That boils in Etna's breast of flame." ^ 

His worst faults are his misanthropy, his skepticism, and his 
frequent lapses from the heights of pure and noble passion to 
the low levels of grossness and vice. At his best Byron 
was master of a power which found expression in passages 
of stately eloquence. He reestablished virility in English 
verse and imparted a force and freedom of movement which 
enriched and enlivened it to a remarkable degree. Scott 
praised " the exquisite poetry . . . scattered through the 
cantos of Don Juan, amid verses which the author seems 
to have thrown from him with an effort as spontaneous as 
that of a tree resigning its leaves." " All styles appear dull 
and all souls sluggish beside his," says Taine. If Byron's 
verse aroused the hostile opposition of conservative critics, 
it aroused as fierce a partisanship among his revolutionary 
sympathizers. Lord Byron was the idol of thousands whose 
ideas were as radical as his. There grew to be a Byronic 
cult, and the influence of his poetry upon thought and style 
was felt throughout Europe for a generation. 

For the direct study of Byron's poetry, the volume of 
Selections edited by F. 1. Carpenter (Holt) is especially 
recommended. Particular attention is directed to the third 
canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, where excellent exam- 
ples may be found of Byron's superb power in description. 
Notice how frequently the subjective element intrudes ; 
study the tone and spirit of these suggestive comments. 
Compare stanzas 70-75 of this third canto with Words- 
worth's utterances in Tintern Ahhey and The Intimations of 
Imm,ortality , What other illustrations of Byron's cynicism 
do you find elsewhere ? Note carefully the diction of these 
poems ; indicate passages which illustrate the spontaneity 
and freedom of the verse. Read the lyrics contained in 
^ The Giaour. 



PEECY BYSSHE SHELLEY 357 

Carpenter's volume, especially The Isles of Greece, Maid of 
Athens, She Walks in Beauty, The Destruction of Sennaclh- 
erib, and On this Day I Coviplete my Thirty-Sixth Year. 
The dramatic poem Manfred should be read entire. Try to 
recognize those elements in Byron's poetry which were new 
to English verse. Do you find anywhere indications of the 
influence of Pope, whose principles of art Byron theoreti- 
cally approved? 

Upon the life of this poet, read John Nichol's Byron, in 
the English Men of Letters Series, or the Life, Brief Bibli- 
by Roden Noel, in the Great Writers Series. For ography. 
criticism, refer to Matthew Arnold's Byron in his Essays in 
Criticism, 2d ser., the study of Byron by J. A. Symonds in 
Ward's English Foets, Jolin Morley's essay in his Miscella- 
nies^ and the essay on the poet in W. E. Henley's Views and 
Reviews (Scribners). There are well-known essays upon 
Byron by Scott, Macaulay, Jeffrey, and Hazlitt ; sketches 
and criticism without limit may be found in the works of 
those who have written upon English literature. 

Like Byron, Shelley came of aristocratic lineage. 
His father, Sir Timothy, was the eldest son percy 
of Bysshe Shelley of Goring Castle : one f^^^^ 
branch of the family traced its descent from 1792-I822. 
Sir Philip Sidney ; another, to which the poet belonged, 
was connected with the Sackvilles.^ Percy Bysshe 
Shelley was born at Field Place, in Sussex. As a 
child, his imaginative faculty was remarkable. He 
peopled the neighborhood with the creations of his 
romantic fancy. A dragon was located in a near-by 
wood ; his sisters were terrified by his youthful tales 
of a headless spectre that haunted the vicinity, and of 
a gigantic tortoise which inhabited Warnham Pond. 
His imagination was evidently of a finer type than that 
which spends itself in the creations of childish buga- 

1 It was Thomas SackTille, Earl of Dorset, -who was part author of 
Gorboduc, the first English tragedy. See page 116. 



-::7 

358 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

boos ; in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty he alludes 
to the experience of his boyhood thus : — 

" While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped 
Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead." 

At twelve Shelley was sent to Eton. His experi- 
ences were similar to those of Cowper. Deli- 
■ cate and refined in his tastes, by disposition 
shy, almost a recluse, he represented a very different 
type of youth from that exhibited in young Lord 
Byron. The environment of the big public school, 
with its 500 pupils, its fagging system — especially 
severe to a boy of Shelley's sensitive temperament — 
and the numberless petty persecutions incident to these 
conditions, was one of oppression and torture to 
Shelley. He stood apart from the rest, almost a soli- 
tary. He was nicknamed " Mad Shelley." As he 
came from his studies he was often set upon by a mob 
of his school fellows, rushing upon their victim with 
shouts and jeers, snatching and scattering his books, 
and chasing him with yells through the streets. By 
no means deficient in physical courage, Shelley was 
capable of standing his ground on equal terms. We 
are told that his eyes would flash like a tiger's ; his 
cheeks grow pale as death ; his limbs quiver with pas- 
sion. Sometimes he stood at bay, and once, when 
harassed beyond endurance at meal time, suddenly 
seized a fork and pinned the hand of his tormentor 
to the table. 

At nineteen Shelley went to Oxford, where his career 
was unfortunately brief. He read eagerly the 
works of the French essayists and became 
more and more radical in his views. The oppression 
of custom and conventionality made him rebellious. 



IMPORTANT POEMS 



359 



He was as sincere as he seemed to be unpractical and 
quixotic in his rash idealism. Thoughts of great 
deeds" were stirring in his soul. Not yet twenty, his 
feverish spirit roused like a champion against what he 
conceived to be the tyranny of the world.^ He pub- 
lished a little tract upon The Necessity of Atheism 
and was expelled from the University. 

In August of that same year, 1811, Shelley married 
Harriet Westbrooke, a pretty, amiable girl 
of sixteen, the daughter of a retired inn- 
keeper in London. With a scanty income, this youth- 
ful and not happily mated pair lived for three years a 
somewhat migratory life. During a short residence 
at Keswick, Shelley made the acquaintance of Southey, 
whose poetry he at that time greatly admired. In the 
spring of 1812 the young couple were in Ireland. The 
cause of Catholic emancipation enlisted the poet's 
sympathy. He issued din Address to the Irish Peoiile 
and spoke at a public meeting which was addressed by 
the agitator Daniel O'Connell. Failing to arouse 
much response by his efforts, he returned to England 
and began the serious work of literature. 

Shelley's jfirst long poem, Queen Mah^ was composed 
at least a year before its publication in 1813. important 
The queen of the fairies is represented as Poems, 
conveying the earth spirit, the sleeping lanthe, to her 
realm in space, and disclosing a vision of the world, 
past, present, and to come. Tyranny, war, superstition, 
and bigotry are painted in crude but vigorous colors. 
The poet's early atheism is echoed in the utterance 
" There is no God ! " but a note, subjoined by the 
author, declares that 

" This negation must be understood solely to affect a cre- 
ative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading spirit, coeternal 
with the universe, remains unshaken." 

^ Read stanzas iii.-v. from the Prelude to The Revolt of Islam. 



360 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Realizing the imperfections of his work, Shelley 
allowed this poem to be printed for private circulation 
only. In 1815, on the borders of Windsor Park, he 
composed his next important poem, Alastor^ or the 
Spirit of Solitude. In this composition, which is ro- 
mantic rather than disputative, the wonderful imagina- 
tion of the poet gathers force ; the emotion is more 
restrained. There is a touch of Wordsworth's calmer 
spirit in passages like this : — 

" I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 
May modulate with murmurs o£ the air, 
And motions of the forests and the sea, 
And voice of living- beings, and woven hymns 
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man." 

The same qualities are found in The Revolt of Islam^ 
written at Marlow, and published in 1817. The hero 
of the poem, Laon, appears as a youth nourished in 
dreams of liberty and desirous to confer its benefits 
upon humanity. The heroine, Laone, is filled with the 
same enthusiasm. Together they struggle passionately 
for this conclusion, and although unsuccessful, they die 
unvanquished. The tone of the poem is entirely opti- 
mistic. " Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole 
law which should govern the moral world." ^ 

A formal separation between Shelley and his wife had 
taken place in 1814, and the poet had formed 
a new union with Mary Godwin, the daugh- 
ter of William Godwin, an advocate of revolutionary 
ideas and a leader whose theories were shared by many 
young enthusiasts. After the tragic death of Harriet, 
by suicide in 1816, Shelley had made Miss Godwin his 
legal wife. In 1818 they left England — the poet 
never to return. Bitter opposition to his views, together 
with personal hostility and criticism of his private life, 

1 Preface to The Revolt of Islam. 



THE POET'S DEATH 



361 



made it impossible for him to remain longer in the 
kingfdom. After livino^ durino^ brief intervals in vari- 
ous Italian cities, including Genoa, Milan, Venice, 
Florence, and Rome, the Shelleys settled permanently 
in Pisa, late in 1819. Some of the most beautiful of 
the lyrics were written at this time. The Lines on the 
Euganean Hills^ the Lines Written in Dejection^ the 
Ode to the West Wind, were products of this period. 
In November, 1819, he completed his masterpiece, the 
great world poem, Prometheus Unbound, and at once 
began upon his sombre but impressive drama. The 
Cenci. The Witch of Atlas, The Sensitive Plant, The 
/Skylark, and Epipsychidion were written in 1820. 
A notable prose work, a Defence of Poetry, was com- 
posed in the following year. The death of Keats in 
1821 inspired Shelley's Adonals, one of the great 
elegies in literature.^ In these compositions we find a 
rapidly maturing power of the imagination and a lyrical 
quality unsurpassed by that of any English poet. The 
spirit of the poetry is fervid and intense, but it is held 
in restraint, and expresses itself with more wisdom and 
sounder judgment than in the period of Queen Mob, 
The poet had learned much in the school of life ; he 
had, it seems to us, now but just begun to comprehend 
himself and the real relations of things when the end 
came ; his career was broken off and his work left in- 
complete by his untimely death. 

In the* spring of 1822 the Shelleys removed from 
Pisa to make their residence near Spezzia, The Poet's 
upon the coast. Byron had already settled Death, 
in Pisa, and Leigh Hunt, the poet, intimately associated 
with both Byron and Shelley in a scheme for the pub- 
lication of a paper in the interests of reform, was 
invited from London to join his friends in Italy. When 

1 See page 196. 



« 



362 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



Hunt arrived in Pisa, Slielley hastened to meet him. 
Returning, he set sail from Leghorn, July 8, 1822, in 
his yacht, the Ariel, together with an English friend 
and neighbor, a Mr. Williams. A sudden squall struck 
the little craft half-way to Spezzia, and all on board 
were drowned. 

Ten days later the bodies were washed ashore. 
They were at first buried in the sand ; but on the 
eleventh of August, in the presence of Byron, Hunt, 
and a common friend, Trelawney,^ Shelley's body was 
exhumed and burned upon a pyre. In accord with 
the ancient pagan rites, wine, oil, and salt were thrown 
upon the flame ; a volume of Keats, found upon the 
person of the poet, was also cast upon the pyre. The 
heart of Shelley, strangely unconsumed, was taken 
from amid the ashes, which were gathered and after- 
ward deposited by the grave of Keats in the English 
burying-ground at Rome. 

In judging of Shelley's place among the poets, it will be 
Sugges natural to compare his work with that of Byron 
tions for and Wordsworth. While in many points Shelley 
Study. Byron sympathized, it will be found that in 

personality and character they were extremely unlike. The 
spirit of revolt speaks in both ; they are alike rebellious and 
defiant; but Shelley's motives are far nobler, his instincts 
and passions far purer than Byron's. There was no cyni- 
cism, no malignancy in Shelley's heart. Sympathetic, ten- 
der, self-forgetful, philanthropic, he was in msmy ways the 
antithesis of Byron. Adoring beauty in all its forms, he 
was never sensual ; on the contrary his tastes were delicate 

^ This g-entleman, Edward J. Trelawney, lived a most romantic life 
of adventurous enterprise. It was he who took the chief part in the 
burning- of Shelley's body. The year following- he accompanied Byron 
into Greece and remained among- the revolutionists after that poefs 
death. He wrote a notable volume, Recollections of the Last Days of 
Byron and Shelley. Upon his death in Eng-land (1881) his own body 
was cremated and his ashes placed by the side of Shelley's at Rome. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 363 



and refined to a superlative degree. The Hymn to Intel- 
lectual Beauty is expressive of his passion, and should be 
studied for an interpretation of that ideal which filled his 
thought. The tone of sadness in Shelley's poetry is very 
striking : whence does it proceed — is its expression depress- 
ing or misanthropic — is it Byronic ? Find in the beautiful 
poem To a Skylark stanzas expressive of this melancholy ; 
look elsewhere for similar expressions. 

Compared with Wordsworth we find that, like Byron, 
SheUey lacked the quiet calm of a philosophic mind ; he did 
not possess the judicial quality, the impartiality, the balance 
of settled wisdom; impulsive, impetuous, he necessarily 
lacked the intuition, the faith of the elder poet. But Shelley 
far surpassed Wordsworth, and Byron too, in imagination 
and ideality. Shakespeare and Milton, possibly Spenser, 
are the only poets who have equaled him in this wonder- 
ful power. There seem no limits to his creative ability. 
In the Prometheus Unbound this power is at its highest. 
Yet it is the lyrical faculty which is always paramount in 
his verse. To a Skylark and The Cloud, The Ode to the 
West Wind, The Sensitive Plant, and Adonais, together 
with the remarkable " songs " in Prometheus Unbound, are 
familiar illustrations. 

The Prometheus Unbound will call for serious study. It 
is one of the world's great poems, and, in spite of its ab- 
struse and subtle allegory, is not beyond the appreciation of 
any intelligent student who has the literary taste. The 
drama has been edited for school use by Vida D. Scudder 
(Heath). The introduction and notes of this edition will be 
found helpful. Shelley's Preface to the poem should be 
read for its expression of his purpose and plan ; incidentally, 
also, as an example of the poet's choice style in prose. How 
does the character of Prometheus fit the scheme of the 
poem ? What features of the myth make this story espe- 
cially appropriate for its purpose ? In Shelley's construction 
of the drama what models are followed ? How are the char- 
acters of Prometheus, Asia, lone, and Panthea to be inter- 
preted allegorically ? What is served by the rejDetition of 



364 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

the curse in the beginning of Act I ? Why is such promi- 
nence given to the fact that Prometheus feels pity for his op- 
pressor ? What is the relation of this expression of pity to the 
subsequent release of the Titan ? What is the real occasion 
of Jupiter's downfall ? Note the dramatic power of the first 
act ; indicate some passages of special force. How many of 
the characters are introduced as spirits, or voices ? The 
lyric passages are particularly beautiful. The song of the 
Fourth Spirit, "On a poet's lips I slept" (Act I., line 738), 
is worthy of special attention. If the student becomes lost 
amid the multitude of complex and shadowy creations of the 
remaining acts, let him at least consider the effect in lyrical 
passages like the " Follow, follow " song (Act IL, lines 166- 
206), the demichorus of spirits (scene ii.),the song of spirits 
(scene iii.), "My coursers are fed with the lightning" 
(Act II., lines 566-582), the "Life of life!" and Asia's 
song (Act II., lines 625-687). What a wealth of melodious 
verse is here ! Richness of fancy and an extraordinary 
command of language are everywhere evident. 

This great drama is the highest expression of the revolu- 
tionary spirit in our literature. Its strength is the strength 
of that movement ; its defects are the result of the crude 
and incomplete reasonings of its philosophy. The spirit of 
the poem is that of love and hope. Freedom is the goal of 
the race ; and although the poem describes but a partial 
triumph, it closes with the sunrise, — the dawn of the new 
day when Love springs 

" from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, . . . 

And folds over the world its healing- wings." 
The Foetical Works of Shelley (8 vols.) edited by Harry 
Brief Bibli- Buxton Forman is the authoritative edition of 
ography. the poet. The Cambridge Shelley, edited by 
G. E. Woodberry, contains the complete poetical works in one 
volume (Houghton, Mifflin and Company), as does the Globe 
Edition (Macmillan), edited by E. Dowden. The Life 
of Shelley (2 vols.) by Edward Dowden is the standard 
biography. J. A. Symonds is author of the Shelley in the 



HIS INSPIRATION^" 



365 



English 3Ien of Letters Series. The Life in the Great 
Writers Series is by William Sharp. There are essays 
upon SheUey by Matthew Arnold in Essays in Criticism^ 
by David Masson in Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, by 
J. Forster in Great Teachers, and by G. E. Woodberry 
in Makers of Literature. 

John Keats, the young English poet of wonderful 
promise, whose pathetic death at the early john Keats 
age of twenty-five inspired Shelley to write 1795-I82i. 
Adonais, is usually mentioned in connection with that 
poet ; but the resemblance is accidental, and even the 
relations of personal friendship between the two were 
slight. Their common bond was the passionate love 
of beauty in both. There was nothing of the revolu- 
tionist in Keats ; while Shelley and Byron, out of sorts 
with the present, were looking with longing to the 
future, Keats was fascinated by visions of the past. 

" Lo ! I must tell a tale of chivalry ; 
For larg-e white plumes are dancing' in mine eye." ^ 

It was a volume of Spenser that discovered the young 
poet to himself at sixteen years of age. When jjjg j^^^pj. 
Charles Cowden Clarke ^ introduced the sur- ration, 
geon's apprentice of Edmonton to the glowing pages 
of The Fo^erie Queene, a new poet of pure romance 
was born into the world of literature. The parentage 
of this poet was humble. His father was employed in 
a livery stable in London, had married his employer's 
daughter, and inherited the business. His son's educa- 
tion was gained in a private school at Enfield, kept by 
the Reverend John Clarke, whose son, already referred 
to, became the poet's intimate and very helpful friend. 

1 Specimen of an Induction to a Poem. 

2 Charles Cowden Clarke (1T87-1S7T) enjoyed the friendship of 
many distingaiished men. He was a noted Shakespearian student and 
the author of the entertaining Recollections of Writers (1878). 



366 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Keats was known at school as a rather lively, pugna- 
cious boy, fond of sports and of reading. He studied 
Latin and translated the ^neid. Greek he never 
learned, but became well acquainted with the classic 
mythology. At fifteen he was taken out of school, both 
parents having died, and apprenticed for five years to 
a London surgeon, although he did not complete the 
term. He entered the hospitals and was ready to begin 
his practice when the allurements of literature proved 
too strong to be resisted, and he definitely determined 
to devote his life to poetry. Through the interest of 
Clarke, Keats began to read Chaucer, and also Chap- 
man's Translation of Horner^ an event which he re- 
corded in his famous sonnet. On First Looking into 
CJiapmaiPbS Horner^ — one of the finest sonnets in the 
language. He became acquainted with Charles Lamb, 
Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, and, later, with 
Shelley. Hunt was his literary adviser and published 
some of Keats's poems in his paper The Examiner. 
Hunt's radical ideas and his hostility to the Govern- 
ment undoubtedly prejudiced popular feeling against 
the poet, and may account in part for the severity of 
the unjust criticism which greeted the poet's appear- 
ance. 

In 1817 Keats published his first volume of verse. 
The Poems "^^^ following year brought forth Endymion^ 
his longest poem, " the stretched metre of an 
antique song ; " inscribed to the memory of Thomas 
Chatterton. The beauties of this ambitious work 
might have disarmed criticism of its manifest faults, 
especially in view of the statements in the very modest 
preface to the poem ; but the critics in the great re- 
views assailed the author with exceptional bitterness. 
Lockhart, the son-in-law of Scott, in a trenchant article 
in BlachiooocV wrote : — 



THE POEMS 



367 



" It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothe- 
cary than a starved poet, so back to the shop, Mr. John, back 
to plasters, pills and ointment-boxes." 

To these abusive personalities Keats replied in man- 
ful fashion, declaring that his own criticism of his work 
had given him pain without comparison beyond what 
Blackwood' 8 or the (Quarterly could inflict ; but the 
indignation of his friends was beyond bounds. They 
asserted that the poet's failing health was aggravated 
and death hastened by the virulence of these attacks, 
and this opinion prevailed for many years. The charge, 
however, was untrue ; the poet was already suffering 
from the disease consumption, which ended fatally three 
years later. 

In 1820 appeared the third volume of this poet's 
works ; it included Lamia^ Isabella^ Hyperion^ The Em 
of St, Agnes, and the four exquisite odes. To a Night- 
ingale, On a Grecian Urn, To Psyche, and On Mel- 
ancholy. The genius of Keats had begun to mature. 

" O for ten years, that I may overwhelm 
Myself in Poesy ! so I may do the deed 
That my own soul has to itself decreed," ^ 

he had cried passionately two years before ; and now 
his career was closing, as he thought, with the deed 
still left undone. The last year of his life was a bitter 
struggle with death. In September, 1820, he went to 
Eome, hoping to gain some benefit from the Italian 
climate. But on the twenty-third of February follow- 
ing, the end came ; the body of Keats was placed in the 
English cemetery, and upon the stone erected to mark 
the spot was engraved the epitaph which the poet, in 
bitterness of spirit, had desired : — 

" Here lies one whose name was writ in water." 



1 Sleep and Poetry. 



368 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

The Burden The quest of Beauty was the passion of 
of Keats. j^g^ts. 

" I did wed 
Myself to things of light from infancy " 

he exclaims in Endymion, which begins with that 
familiar line, 

" A thing of beauty is a joy forever." 

His spirit is pagan in the expression of its ideal : — 

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." ^ 

In this worship of beauty in the abstract he and 
Shelley were at one ; and this is the single point of 
union between the two. The lavish luxuriance of 
Keats's earlier work had given place in the later poems 
to a more discreet and careful use of his resources ; he 
had attained a marvelous perfection of form. Had he 
lived he would have accomplished great things in Eng- 
lish poetry. But in the weakness and dejection of the 
last dark days, he was mistaken. His name was not 
writ in water. No English poet has a more tender hold 
upon the memory than John Keats. Scarcely any 
other has had so deep and continuous an influence upon 
the poetry of those coming after.^ 

Two minor poets, Moore and Hunt, whose names are 
Thomas frequently mentioned in connection with By- 
Moore, ron and Shelley, were prominently identified 

1779-1852 

Leigh Hunt, with the revolutionary group. Tom Moore, 
1784-1859. oftenest remembered as the author of Irish 
Melodies (1807) and the oriental romance of Lalla 
Moohh (1817), was born in Dublin and educated at 
Trinity College. He became a law student in London, 
won the friendship of Byron, and was made the liter- 

^ Ode on a Grecian Urn. 

2 The volume of selected poems edited, with Introduction and Notes, 
by Arlo Bates (Ginn) is especially recommended. 



ROMANTICISM IN ENGLISH PROSE 369 



ary executor of that poet. His Life of Byron was 
long the standard biography. What Burns did for 
Scotland, Moore tried to do for Ireland ; but his songs 
are less natural than those of the Scotch ploughman, 
and his other poetry, polished and sweet though it is, 
is artificial in the main. 

Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, in Middlesex, 
and studied with Coleridge and Lamb at Christ's Hos- 
pital School. His career as a journalist began with 
the establishment in 1808 of a weekly paper, The Ex- 
aminer^ in which he published some articles reflecting 
upon the Prince Regent that led to his imprisonment 
for libel. A poem upon the subject of Francesca da 
Rimini, written during his imprisonment, had consider- 
able influence upon both Shelley and Keats. His short 
poem Ahou Ben Adhem is well known. His style was 
light and graceful ; but his prose sketches and criti- 
cisms are of greater value than his verse. 

IV. ROMANTICISM IN ENGLISH PROSE: LAMB, 
DE QUINCEY 

The influence of the romantic movement is strongly 
felt in the work of two prose writers contemporary with 
the poets just described. They were not novelists like 
Scott ; their compositions are properly classified as 
essays : but they are distinguished from the ordinary 
essay type by the nature of their subjects and the man- 
ner of treatment. The essays of Charles Lamb, while 
Addisonian in a sense, are more truly Elizabethan in 
spirit, and there is not lacking a certain suggestiveness 
in them of the manner of Keats. A similar resem- 
blance in spirit and method may be traced between the 
writings of De Quincey and the poetry of Coleridge. 
De Quincey and Lamb are both genuine romanticists. 
The imaginative element is conspicuous in the produc- 
tions of each. 



370 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Charles Lamb, the most delightful of English essay- 
Charles whose memory is honored not only for 
Lamb, the delicate grace and flavor of his style, but 
as well for his sweet and lovable nature, was 
born in London, within the confines of the Temple — 
that historic structure of huge proportions and ram- 
bling extent, once the chapter house of the Knights 
Templar, but for generations appropriated to the use 
of barristers for offices and lodgings. John Lamb was 
a lawyer's clerk, in exceedingly poor circumstances. 
There were three children who survived childhood: 
Charles ; his sister Mary, ten years his senior ; and an 
elder brother, John, who grew up selfish and ease- 
loving, apparently without concern in the fortunes and 
trials of the family. Charles describes his father ^ as 
" a man of an incorrigible and losing honesty." 

Through the interest of a friend of John Lamb's 
employer, Charles was taken when six years 
old out of the dingy little school in Fetter 
Lane, where he obtained the rudiments of learning, and 
given a scholarship in the famous " blue-coat " school 
of Christ's Hospital, where he remained seven years, 
and where the life-long friendship with Coleridge, his 
fellow pupil, was firmly established. Lamb's child- 
hood was darkened by the struggle with poverty, but 
his cheery, courageous temper was early in evidence. 
His imagination was particularly active ; he declares 
that from his fourth to his seventh year he never laid 
his head on his pillow " without an assurance, which 
realized its own prophecy, of seeing some frightful 
spectre." ^ He was a good Latin scholar, and amused 
himself by turning nursery rhymes into that language. 



1 Under the name of " Lovel," in The Old Benchers of the Inner 
Temple. 

2 Witches, and Other Night Fears. 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE HOUSEHOLD 371 



In the study of Greek he did not proceed very far, 
reaching the rank of " deputy-Grecian," beyond which 
he could not pass, as the higher grade presupposed an 
entrance into the ministry ; and from this he was pre- 
vented by an unfortunate impediment in his speech 
which made him a stutterer all his life. 

In 1789 Charles Lamb left school — fourteen years 
old — and at that youthful age took up the An Office 
responsibilities of active life. His father's ^^^'^^^ 
health was failing, and the shadow of a terrible malady 
hung over the household. The boy found employment 
in the South-Sea House, the office of a great London 
trading company ; two years later he secured a clerk- 
ship with the East India Company, in whose employ he 
continued for thirty-three years. He found little lei- 
sure ; but when Coleridge occasionally ran down from 
Cambridge for a brief visit to London, it was the plea- 
sure of the two school comrades to meet at the " Salu- 
tation and Cat " to spend long evenings together in the 
discussion of literature and old times. Lamb's first 
literary efforts appeared in connection with his friend's. 
In 1796 Coleridge printed his first volume of poems, 
and there were included four sonnets signed C. L." 

The winter of 1795-96 ushered in a year of tragic 
significance for the Lambs. Insanity was a 
family inheritance. John Lamb, the father, gedyofthe 
had gradually lost his faculties until now he 
had lapsed into the condition of a child. During the 
winter Charles himself succumbed to an attack of the 
disease and passed some weeks in confinement at a 
hospital for the insane. The mother was an invalid. 
The burden of the household necessarily fell upon Mary 
Lamb. In September, 1796, her own reason gave way, 
and in a fit of madness she took her mother's life. So 
long as the father lived Mary remained in confinement, 



s 



372 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

gradually recovering her reason under treatment. Such 
was the calamity which fell upon Charles and Mary 
Lamb, an affliction from the effects of which they were 
never entirely freed. Some knowledge of its details is 
necessary if we would appreciate the extraordinary 
fortitude and patient heroism which distinguished the 
lives of this gifted pair. 

By and by, upon assuming certain responsibilities. 
Brother Charles Lamb was permitted by the authori- 
and Sister, ^-^g ^^^.^ j^-g g^g^^gp [j^ home. She 

continued subject to occasional temporary derangement 
all her life ; when threatening symptoms appeared she 
was placed in a retreat, returning after recovery to the 
home. A friend of the family relates how once he met 
Charles and Mary Lamb walking, hand in hand, across 
the fields to the old asylum, their faces bathed in tears. 
The attachment of this brother and sister was ideal ; 
none other ever crept in to interrupt it. As long as he 
lived Charles cared for his sister's comfort with an 
almost religious devotion ; and in her turn she devoted 
herself to him. 

Mary Lamb shared the talents of Charles. 

" Her education in youth was not much attended to. . . . 
She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a spacious 
closet of good old English reading, without much selection 
or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and whole- 
some pasturage." ^ 

Lamb's literary career began unostentatiously with 
The Liter- publication, in 1797, of Poems by Charles 
aryLife. Lamh and Charles Lloyd ; fifteen of these, 
described by a contemporary reviewer as " plaintive," 
were by Lamb. In 1798 he published a prose tale of 

^ Mackery End, in Hertfordshire, in which Lamb describes his sister 
under the name of ' ' Bridget Elia." 



THE TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE 373 



Mosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret. His un- 
successful drama, John Woodvil, followed in 1799. 
Success was slow in coming. There were occasional 
contributions to the newspapers, six jokes a day to The 
Post, at sixpence ; but prospects were not very encour- 
aging. 

" It has been sad and heavy times with us lately," writes 
Mary Lamb in 1805. " When I am pretty well his low 
spirits throw me back again ; and when he begins to get a 
little cheerful, then I do the same kind office for him. You 
would laugh, or you would cry, perhaps both, to see us sit 
together, looking at each other with long and rueful faces, 
and saying ' How do you do ? ' and ' How do you do ? ' and 
then we fall a crying, and say we will be better on the morrow. 
He says we are like toothache and his friend gumboil, which 
though a kind of ease, is but an uneasy kind of ease, a com- 
fort of rather an uncomfortable sort." 

But the spirit of the home was by no means gloomy. 
Coleridge, with his brilliant conversation, was a fre- 
quent guest ; Wordsworth and Southey were familiar 
visitors : and within the small circle of his intimate 
friends the gay spirits of Charles Lamb easily broke 
through the shyness and the melancholy that sometimes 
oppressed him. 

The first real success came in 1807, with the publi- 
cation of Tales from Shakespeare. In this 
work, which still remains a much used classic, from 

the stories of the most important Shake- Shake- 

. speare. 

spearian dramas are told with remarkable in- 
sight and charm of style. Mary Lamb had a part in 
the honors of this achievement, the comedies having 
been treated by her, while her brother worked upon 
the tragedies. A new interest was aroused in the 
literature of Elizabeth's time which had been long 
neglected, an interest which was further stimulated by 



374 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

the publication in the following year of Specimens of 
English Dramatic Poets Contemjjorary with Shake- 
speare. These works gave Lamb an established repu- 
tation in literary criticism. Two subsequent essays, on 
The Tragedies of Shakespeare and on The Genius 
and Character of Hogarth^ added to his fame. It 
was not, however, until the Essays of Elia^ began 
to appear in the newly established London Magazine 
that the real genius of Lamb was revealed. 

In August, 1820, the essayist contributed his first 
The Essays P^-psr to the Magazine^ that upon The 
of Eiia. South- Sea House. One a month these papers 
continued to appear until the close of 1822, when the 
entire series was published under the title by which 
they are universally known. The subjects of these 
essays seem to have been chosen almost at haphazard : 
they range from Oxford in the Vacation to The Praise 
of Chimney- Sweepers and A Dissertation upon Roast 
Pig ; from Christ's Hospital Five-and- Thirty Years 
Ago to A Bachelor s Complaint of the Behavior of 
Married People. There is much in these light-hearted, 
breezy observations upon the humors of life to remind 
one of Addison and Steele ; but they have a distinction 
and a flavor entirely of their own. Lamb was enamored 
of the old ; he declared that when a new book ap- 
peared he read an old one. He confesses " hanging 
over, for the thousandth time, some passage in old 
Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries." ^ The 
Religio Medici^ the works of the older dramatists, were 
a source of never-failing delight. He was saturated 
with the very diction of the Elizabethan writers, their 
conceits, their turns of phrase ; there is much to suggest 

^ The name " Elia " really belonged to a fellow clerk, and was appro- 
priated as a joke by Lamb, who signed his contributions by that name. 
2 Mackery End, in Hertfordshire. 



SUGGESTIONS 



375 



them in the English of " Elia." The SJssays are filled 
with the gentle humor of their author's sunny spirit. 
There is no irony, no cynicism in Lamb's criticism 
of life. He was asked one day if he did not hate 
a certain person. "Hate him?" he retorted; "how 
could I hate him ? Don't I know him ? I never could 
hate any one I knew." He was a timid, sensitive, ner- 
vous, stammering little man, at ease only among the 
few who were his intimate associates ; yet he loved 
the crowded thoroughfares of the metropolis, and 
craved the presence and nearness of his fellows. He 
once wrote to Wordsworth that he often shed tears in 
the motley Strand, from fullness of joy at so much 
life. 

In 1825 Lamb was given a generous pension by his 
employers, and released from the servitude of 
the desk. But the last years were not happy "^ears. 
ones. Mary's malady was growing worse ; Charles's 
health was failing. The experiment of a rural resi- 
dence brought loneliness. Finally they settled in Ed- 
monton. The Last Essays of Elia were published in 
1833. The following year Charles died. Mary Lamb 
lived until 1847, dying at the age of eighty-two. She 
was buried by her brother's side, in the churchyard 
of Edmonton. 

To suggest a " study " of Charles Lamb would almost 

spoil the pleasure which may be absorbed, intui- „ 
. . , Suggestions. 

tively, by a sympathetic reading of these delight- 
ful essays. It seems more appropriate to suggest merely 
what appears the more direct and natural route to the heart 
of Elia, by indicating certain essays to be read in order, 
leaving the student to use his own good sense and ready 
inchnation for further self-direction. Take, then, first, 
those papers which deal with the localities associated with 
Elia's interests : The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, 



376 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Chrisfs Hospital Five-and- Thirty Years Ago, Blakesmore 

in H shire, The South-Sea House, Mackery End, in 

Hertfordshire. Some of the essays named contain delicate 
portraitures of character which introduce, under transparent 
disguises, the author's relatives and friends. In My Re- 
lations we have a sketch of the older brother John. Now 
turn at will among the remaining papers of either series ; 
discover for yourself specimens of Lamb's delicate humor, 
like the episode of the Quakers at Andover in Imperfect 
Sympathies, the wealth of jocular allusion in All Fools' 
Day, the quaint and sunny philosophy contained in Mrs. 
Battle's Opinions on Whist, the quizzical confessions of his 
own defects in The Old and the New Schoolmaster, and in 
A Chapter on Ears, with revelations of a more serious 
sentiment in Old China, Barbara S., and The Old Margate 
Hoy, or the pathetic confidences of Dream Children; A 
Revery, and the frank, self-portraiture of The Superannu- 
ated Man. The antiquated phrasings, the choice discrimi- 
nation of terms, the rich vocabulary — these may all be 
noted without the exact and careful processes of formal 
study. Take the Essays of Elia and read the character 
of Charles Lamb. 

The Essays of Elia are published in the Camelot 
Brief Bibli- Series. The Tales from Shakespeare are included 
ography. in Numbers 64, 65, 66 of the Riverside Litera- 
ture Series (Houghton, Mifflin and Company) ; Number 79 
contains nine of the most noted Essays. The Life, Letters, 
and Writings of Charles Lamb, edited by Percy Fitzgerald, 
is a standard work. The Poems, Plays, and Miscellaneous 
Essays are edited by A. Ainger (Macmillan). The best 
Life of Lamb is that by Ainger, in the English Men of 
Letters Series. There are interesting essays upon Lamb 
by G. E. Woodberry, in Makers of Literature, by Walter 
Pater, in Appreciations, by Augustine Birrell, in Obiter 
Dicta, and by De Quincey, in his Biographical Essays. 

Thomas De Quincey is one of the eccentric figures in 
English literature. Popularly he is known as the 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 



377 



English Opium-Eater and as the subject of numer- 
ous anecdotes which emphasize the oddities .pjioj^as 
of his temperament and the unconventional- DeQuincey, 
ity of his habits. That this man of distin- i'^^^-^^^^- 
guished genius was the victim — pitifully the victim 

— of opium is the lamentable fact ; that he was mor- 
bidly shy and shunned intercourse with all except a 
few intimate, congenial friends ; that he was comically 
indifferent to the fashion of his dress ; that he was the 
most unpractical and childlike of men ; that he was 
often betrayed, because of these peculiarities, into 
many ridiculous embarrassments, — of all this there 
can be no doubt ; but these idiosyncrasies are, after all, 
of minor importance — the accidents, not the essentials 
in the life and personality of this remarkable man. 
The points that should attract our notice, the qualities 
that really give distinction to De Quincey, are the 
broad sweep of his knowledge, almost unlimited in its 
scope and singularly accurate in its details, a facility of 
phrasing and a word supply that transformed the mere 
power of discriminating expression into a fine art, and 
a style that, while it lapsed occasionally from the 
standard of its own excellence, was generally self-cor- 
rective and frequently forsook' the levels of common- 
place excellence for the highest reaches of impassioned 
prose. Nor is this all. His pages do not lack in humor 

— humor of the truest and most delicate type ; and if 
De Quincey is at times impelled beyond the bounds of 
taste, even these excursions demonstrate his power, at 
least, in handling the grotesque. His sympathies, how- 
ever, are always genuine, and often are profound. 

Thomas De Quincey was born in Manchester August 
15, 1785. His father was a well-to-do mer- 
chant of literary taste ; but of him the chil- 
dren of the household scarcely knew : he was an invalid, 



I 

378 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

a prey to consumption, and during their childhood made 
his residence mostly in the milder climate of Lisbon or 
the West Indies. Thomas was seven years old when 
his father was brought home to die, and the lad, though 
sensitively impressed by the event, felt little of the 
significance of relationship between them. Mrs. De 
Quincey was a somewhat stately lady, rather strict in 
discipline and rigid in her views. 

De Quincey's child life was spent in the country ; 
first at a pretty rustic dwelling known as " The Farm," 
and after 1792 at a larger country house near Man- 
chester, built by his father, and given by his mother 
the pleasantly suggestive name of " Greenhay " — hay 
meaning hedge^ or hedgerow. De Quincey was not 
a sturdy boy. Shy and dreamy, exquisitely sensitive 
to impressions of melancholy and mystery, he was 
endowed with an imagination abnormally active even 
for a child. It is customary to give prominence 
to De Quincey's pernicious habit of opium-eating, in 
attempting to explain the grotesque fancies and weird 
flights of his marvelous mind in later years ; yet it is 
only fair to emphasize the fact that the later achieve- 
ments of that strange creative faculty were clearly 
foreshadowed in youth. For example, the earliest in- 
cident in his life that he could afterward recall he 
describes as 

" a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite 
nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason — that 
it demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been consti- 
tutional, and not dependent upon laudanum." ^ 

Again he tells us how, when six years old, upon the 
death of a favorite sister three years older, he stole 
unobserved upstairs to the death chamber; unlocking 
1 Autobiographic Sketches, eh. i. 



SCHOOL DAYS 



379 



the door and entering silently, he stood for a moment 
gazing through the open window toward the bright 
sunlight of a cloudless day, then turned to behold the 
angel face upon the pillow. Awed in the presence of 
death, the meaning of which he began vaguely to un- 
derstand, he stood listening to a " solemn wind " that 
began to blow — " the saddest that ear ever heard." 
What followed should appear in De Quincey's own 
words : — 

" A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue 
sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on 
billows that also ran up the shaft forever ; and the billows 
seemed to pursue the throne of God ; but that also ran on 
before us and fled away continually. The flight and the 
pursuit seemed to go on forever and ever. Frost gathering 
frost, some sarsar ^ wind of death, seemed to repel me ; some 
mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to 
evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them ; 
shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and tor- 
ment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept 
— for how long I cannot say : slowly I recovered my self- 
possession ; and when I woke, found myself standing as 
before, close to my sister's bed." 

In 1796 the home at Greenhay was broken up. Mrs. 

De Quincey removed to Bath, and Thomas 

, 1 . , 11^1 School Days, 

was placed m the grammar school of that 

town. Four years later he entered the grammar school 
at Manchester, his guardians expecting that a three 
years' course in this school would bring him a schol- 
arship at Oxford. However, the new environment 
proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, 
in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed 
grit in abundance, and who was through life more or 
less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. 

^ Derived from Sahara. 



380 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



His flight was significant. Early on a July morning 
he slipped quietly off — in one pocket a copy of an 
English poet, a volume of Euripides in the other. His 
first move was toward Chester — the seventeen-year-old 
runaway deeming it proper that he should report at 
once to his mother, who was now living in that town. 
So he trudged overland forty miles and faced his 
astonished and indignant parent. At the suggestion 
of a kind-hearted uncle, just home from India, Thomas 
was let off easily ; indeed, he was given an allowance 
of a guinea a week, with permission to go on a tramp 
through North Wales, a proposition which he hailed 
with delight. The next three months were spent in a 
rather pleasant ramble, although the weekly allowance 
was scarcely sufficient to supply all the comforts de- 
sired. The trip ended strangely. Some sudden fancy 
seizing him, the boy broke off all connection with his 
friends and went to London. Unknown, unprovided 
for, he buried himself in the vast life of the metro- 
polis. He lived a precarious existence for several 
months, suffering from exposure, reduced to the verge 
of starvation, his whereabouts a mystery to his friends. 
The cloud of this experience hung darkly over his spirit, 
even in later manhood ; perceptions of a true world of 
strife were vivid ; impressions of these wretched months 
formed the material of his most sombre dreams. 

Rescued at last, providentially, De Quincey spent the 
next period of his life, covering the years 1803-7, in 
residence at Oxford. His career as a student at the 
University is obscure. He was a member of Worcester 
College, was known as a quiet, studious man, and lived 
an isolated if not a solitary life. In 1807 he disap- 
peared from Oxford, having taken the written tests 
for his degree, but failing to present himself for the 
necessary oral examination. 



THE OPIUM-EATER 



381 



The year of his departure from Oxford brought to 
De Quincey a long-coveted pleasure, — ac- j^^^^^^ 
quaintance with two famous contemporaries Friend- 
whom he greatly admired, Coleridge and 
Wordsworth. Characteristic of De Quincey in many 
ways was his gift, anonymously made, of X300 to his 
hero, Coleridge. This was in 1807, when De Quincey 
was twenty-two, and was master of his inheritance. 
The acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and in 1809 the 
young man, himself gifted with talents which were to 
make him equally famous with these, took up his resi- 
dence at Grasmere, in the Lake Country, occupying for 
many years the cottage which Wordsworth had given 
up on his removal to ampler quarters at Rydal Mount. 
Here he spent much of his time in the society of the 
men who were then grouped in distinguished neigh- 
borhood ; besides Wordsworth and Coleridge, the poet 
Southey was accessible, and a frequent visitor was John 
Wilson, later widely known as the " Christopher North " 
of Blackwood^ s Magazine. Nor was De Quincey idle ; 
his habits of study were confirmed ; indeed, he was 
already a philosopher at twenty-four. These were years 
of hard reading and industrious thought, wherein he 
accumulated much of that metaphysical wisdom which 
was afterward to win admiring recognition. In 1816 
De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, a farmer's 
daughter living near. 

De Quincey's experience with opium had begun 
while he was a student at the University, in TheOpium- 
1804. It was first taken to obtain relief from Eater, 
neuralgia, and his use of the drug did not at once be- 
come habitual. During the period of residence at 
Grasmere, however, De Quincey became confirmed in 
the habit, and so thoroughly was he its victim that for 
a season his intellectual powers were well-nigh para- 



382 FKOM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

lyzed ; his mind sank under such a cloud of depression 
and gloom that his condition was pitiful in the extreme. 
Just before his marriage, in 1816, De Quincey, by a 
vigorous effort, partially regained his self-control and 
succeeded in materially reducing his daily allowance 
of the drug; but in the following year he fell more 
deeply than ever under its baneful power, until in 
1818-19 his consumption of opium was something 
almost incredible. Thus he became truly enough the 
great English Opium-Eater, whose Confessions were 
later to fill a unique place in English literature. It 
was finally the absolute need of bettering his financial 
condition that compelled De Quincey to shake off the 
shackles of his vice ; this he practically accomplished, 
although perhaps he was never entirely free from the 
habit. The event is coincident with the beginning of 
his career as a public writer. In 1820 he became a 
man of letters. 

As a professional writer it is to be noted that 
De Quincey was throughout a contributor to the peri- 
odicals. With one or two exceptions all his works 
found their way to the public through the pages of the 
magazines, and he was associated as contributor with 
most of those that were prominent in his time. From 
1821 to 1825 we find him residing for the most part in 
London, and here his public career began. It was De 
Quincey's most distinctive work which first appeared. 
The London Magazine^ in its issue for Septemberj 
1821, contained the first paper of the Confessions 
of an English Opium-Eater. The novelty of the sub- 
ject was sufficient to obtain for the new writer an in- 
terested hearing, and there was much discussion as to 
whether his apparent frankness was genuine or assumed. 
All united in applause of the masterly style which dis- 
tinguished the essay, also of the profundity and value 



THE MAGAZINE ARTICLES 383 



of the interesting material it contained. A second 
part was included in the magazine for October. Other 
articles by the Opiiim-Eater followed, in which the 
wide scholarship of the author was abundantly shown, 
although the topics were of less general interest. 

In 1826 De Quincey became an occasional contribu- 
tor to Blackwood^ 8 Magazine^ and this con- 
nection drew him to Edinburgh, where he Magazine 
remained, either in the city itself or in its 
vicinity, for the rest of his life. The grotesquely hu- 
morous Essay on Murder Considered as One of the 
Fine Arts appeared in Blackwood's in 1827. In 1832 
he published a series of articles on Roman history, en- 
titled The Ccesars. It was in July, 1837, that the 
Bevolt of the Tartars appeared ; in 1840 his critical 
paper upon The Essenes. Meanwhile De Quincey had 
begun contributions to Tait's Magazine^ another Edin- 
burgh publication, and it was in that periodical that 
the Sketches of Life and Manners from the Autohio- 
grajyhy of an English Opium-Eater began to appear 
in 1834, running on through several years. These 
sketches include the chapters on Wordsworth, Cole- 
ridge, Lamb, and Southey, as well as those Autobio- 
graphic Sketches which form such a charming and 
illuminating portion of his complete works. 

The family life was sadly broken in 1837 by the death 
of De Quincey's wife. He who was now left as guar- 
dian of the little household of six children was himself so 
helpless in all practical matters that it seemed as though 
he were in their childish care rather than protector of 
them. Scores of anecdotes are related of his odd and 
unpractical behavior. One of his curious habits had 
been the multiplication of lodgings ; as books and 
manuscripts accumulated about him, so that there re- 
mained room for no more, he would turn the key upon 



384 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



his possessions and migrate elsewhere, to repeat the per- 
formance later on. It is known that as many as four 
separate rents were at^one and the same time being paid 
by this eccentric man of genius, rather than allow the 
disturbance or contraction of his domain. 

The literary labors were continuous. In 1845 the 
beautiful Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the 
Depths) appeared in Blackwood's ; The English Mail 
Coach and The Vision of Sudden Death in 1849. 
Among other papers contributed to Tail's Magazine^ 
the Joan of Arc appeared in 1847. During the last 
ten years of his life De Quincey was occupied chiefly 
in preparing for the publishers a complete edition of 
his works. Ticknor & Fields of Boston, the most dis- 
tinguished of our American publishing firms, had put 
forth, 1851-55, the first edition of De Quincey's col- 
lected writings, in twenty volumes. The first British 
edition was undertaken by Mr. James Hogg of Edin- 
burgh, in 1853, with the cooperation of the author, and 
under his direction ; the final volume of this edition 
was not issued until the year following De Quincey's 
death. 

In the autumn of 1859 the frail physique of the now 
famous Opium-Eater grew gradually feeble, although 
suffering from no definite disease. It became evident 
that his life was drawing to its end. On December 8, his 
two daughters standing by his side, he fell into a doze. 
His mind had been wandering amid the scenes of his 
childhood, and his last utterance was the cry, " Sister, 
sister, sister ! " as if in recognition of one awaiting him, 
one who had been often in his dreams, the beloved 
Elizabeth, whose death had made so profound and last- 
ing an impression on his imagination as a child. 

De Quincey is an author to be studied. Of the "one 
hundred and fifty magazine articles " which comprise his 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



385 



works, there are many that will not claim the general inter- 
est ; yet his writings as a whole will be recognized g^ggeg. 
by students of rhetoric always, as containing excel- tions for 
lences which place their author among the English ^^^^y- 
classics. Two leading characteristics should become obvi- 
ous to the student who reads the more important and more 
attractive of these essays : the great imaginative power of the 
author, and the very evident romanticism which pervades 
these works. 

A comparison between De Quincey and Lamb both in 
choice of themes and method of treatment will show many 
contrasts as well as some resemblances. In style they are 
wholly different : which of the two attracts you the more ? 
It will be interesting to read De Quincey's account of A Meet- 
ing with Lamb : what serious defects do you note in the 
composition of this article ? 

Particularly worthy of reading are the Autobiographic 
Sketches, The Confessions of an English Opiuvi-Eater, 
The English Mail Coach, and The Vision of Sudden Death, 
Joan of Arc, the Suspiria de Profundis, and Murder Con- 
sidered as One 'of the Fine Ai^ts. An excellent volume of 
Selections from De Quincey has been edited, with an elabo- 
rate introduction and notes, by M. H. Turk, in The Athe- 
nceum Press Series (Ginn) ; this volume is recommended for 
the special study of the essayist. 

The authoritative edition of De Quincey's Works is that 
edited by David Masson and published in fourteen g^j^j Bibll- 
volumes by Adam and Charles Black (Edinburgh), ography. 
For American students the Riverside Edition, in twelve vol- 
umes (Houghton, Mifflin and Company), will be found con- 
venient. The most satisfactory Life of De Quincey is the 
one by Masson in the English Men of Letters Series. Of a 
more anecdotal type are the Life of De Quincey by H. A. 
Page, whose real name is Alexander H. Japp (2 vols., New 
York, 1877), and De Quincey Memorials (New York, 1891), 
by the same author. Very interesting is the brief volume, 
Recollections of Thomas De Quincey, by John R. Findlay 
(Edinburgh, 1886), who also contributes the paper on De 



386 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Quincey to the Encyclopcedia Britannica. De Quincey and 
his Friends, by James Hogg (London, 1895), is another 
volume of recollections, souvenirs, and anecdotes which help 
to make real their subject's personality. Besides the editor, 
other writers contribute to this volume : Richard Woodhouse, 
John R. Find lay, and John Hill Burton, who has given 
under the name " Papaverius " a picturesque description of 
the Opium-Eater. The student should always remember that 
De Quincey's own chapters in the Autobiographic Sketches, 
and the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which are 
among the most charming and important of his writings, 
are also the most authoritative and most valuable sources 
of our information concerning him. In reading about De 
Quincey do not fail to read De Quincey himself. 

The best criticism of the Opium-Eater's work is found 
in William Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature 
(Ginn and Company). A shorter essay is contained in 
Saintsbury's History of Nineteenth Century Literature. A 
very valuable list of all De Quincey's writings, in chrono- 
logical order, is given by Fred N. Scott, in his edition of De 
Quincey's essays on Style, Rhetoric, and Language (AUyn 
& Bacon). Numerous magazine articles may be found by 
referring to Poole's Index. 

Among the prose writers of this generation were a 
William group of men who won distinction as essay- 
Haziitt, jg|.g special field of literary criticism. 

1778-1830. TT T • 1 11 . *^ , . 

Francis Hazlitt introduced the romantic style into 
i778-i'850. form of literature, infusing the spirit 
John of sentiment, even of passion, into the expres- 
1785-1854. sion of his critical judgments. His estimates 
sonLwjk- "^^^ colored by his own personal enthu- 
hart, siasm for their work ; he writes brilliantly, 
1794-1854. times with eloquence. Among his most 
important essays are those on English Poets (1818), 
the English Comic Writers (1819), Dramatic Litera- 
ture of the Age of Elizabeth (1821), and the Life of 



JEFFREY, LOCKHART, WILSON 387 



Napoleon (1828-30). Francis Jeffrey, a distinguished 
Scotch advocate, was one of the chief originators of the 
Edinburgh Meview^ and remained one of its principal 
contributors for nearly forty years. With the auto- 
cratic and not infallible judgments of that famous 
quarterly, Jeffrey's literary career is closely identi- 
fied. His style was forcible rather than eloquent ; 
in ridicule and satire he was inimitable. Intellectually 
keen and eminently practical, he lacked the ability to 
understand the new poetry of Wordsworth and his 
fellows or to appreciate the genius of Byron or Keats. 
John G. Lockhart, the son-in-law of Walter Scott and 
author of the remarkable Life of Scott (1838), stands 
with Jeffrey among the robust reviewers in the first half 
of the century. In 1826 he became editor of the Quar- 
terly Review and took up his residence in London. 
Like Jeffrey he wielded a trenchant pen, expressing 
his critical opinions at times in a manner most exasper- 
ating to the victim. He wrote a Life of Burns (1827) 
and a Life of Napoleon (1829). He shared the pre- 
judices of the Scotch critics against the Lake poets, 
and described Tennyson's first volume as " drivel and 
more dismal drivel, and even more dismal drivel." 
John Wilson, better known by his pen-name of " Chris- 
topher North," was a picturesque genius of massive 
frame and athletic tastes, whose literary activities were 
connected with a third great review, Blackwood' s 
Magazine} He occupied the chair of Moral Philoso- 
phy in the University of Edinburgh ; but his career 
commenced when he began contributing to Blach- 
tcood's in 1825. His Nodes Amhrosiance^ delight- 
ful reminiscences of his literary associates, is his 
best-known work. His style was more attractive than 

1 Blackwood^s was established in 1817, the Edinburgh Review in 
1802, the Quarterly in 1809. 



388 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Jeffrey's, and his critical judgment more impartial and 
discreet. 

Filling a singular place in the literary life of this 
Walter ^poch stands the peculiar figure of Landor. 
Savage Expelled from liugby for insubordination, 
1775-1864. disciplined at Oxford for his ungoverna- 
ble self-assertiveness, he went his way through 
life disturbing and disturbed. He was infected, like 
Byron, with the revolutionary fever ; and in 1808 he 
raised a band of volunteers to assist the Spaniards in 
their struggle with Napoleon. His entrance into liter- 
ature came with the publication of the wildly extrava- 
gant romantic poem, Gebh\ in 1798, the year of the 
Lyrical Ballads. Of several dramas written during 
the next few years, Count Julian was the most notable, 
receiving high praise from De Quincey. The works by 
which Landor's name is best known, however, the Ima- 
ginary Conversations^ were written for the most part 
between 1821 and 1835, during the author's residence 
in Italy, under classic rather than romantic influences. 
Unique in their conception, these Conversations pre- 
sent the portraitures in dialogue of well-known histori- 
cal characters — in the main faithfully suggesting the 
traits for which they were noted in life. Diogenes dis- 
courses with Plato, Marcellus with Hannibal; Henry 
VIII. visits Anne Boleyn in the Tower ; Queen Eliza- 
beth discusses with Cecil the claims of Spenser the 
poet. Epictetus and Seneca, Peter the Great, Louis 
XIV., Boccaccio and Petrarca, William Wallace, 
Bacon, Cromwell, Rousseau, and Epicurus — these are 
some of the diverse types of various races and times, 
whose portraits Landor thus delineates. A classic dig- 
nity and coldness characterize these essays, very differ- 
ent from the prodigal warmth and color of Gebir. In 
his old age Landor continued to produce. 



THE VICTORIAN AGE 



389 



"Do you think the grand old Pagan wrote that piece 
just now ? " asks Carlyle of a Conversation published when 
Landor was over eighty. " The sound of it is like the 
ring of Roman swords on the helmets of barbarians ! The 
unsubduable old Roman." ^ 

He was honored by many distinguished representa- 
tives of the new era; John Forster, Dickens, and 
Browning were among his friends. 

S V. THE GREAT ESSAYISTS : MACAULAY, CARLYLE, 
RUSKIN. 

The last great epoch in the history of English liter- 
ature began in the second quarter of the cen- 
tury just completed. In the popular life of torian Age. 
the nation, as well as in its literary life, the Victorian 
age was an era of wonderful development and achieve- 
ment. Materially, the progress of invention and ex- 
pansion has been marvelous. It was not until 1829 
that the steam locomotive was placed in actual service 
upon an English railway ; it was in the late thirties 
that the first steamships crossed the Atlantic, and that 
the electric telegraph came into practical use. Scien- 
tific discovery has within this period opened a new 
world of human knowledge. The spirit of democracy 
has asserted itself in the political and social organi- 
zation of the state. In 1832 the English Reform Bill 
was passed, virtually making the people the governing 
power of the kingdom. The growth of popular edu- 
cation has been remarkable, and the literary activities 
of the age have kept pace with the material and intel- 
lectual progress of the people. 

The characteristics of Victorian literature are best 
seen in the work of such representative prose writers 

^ See the excellent introduction, by Harelock Ellis, to Imaginary 
Conversations in the Camelot Series. 



390 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

as Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, and Dickens, such poets as 
Tennyson, Browning, and Morris, preeminently teach- 
ers of their generation ; they reveal their nearness to 
the public life and thought of the age, their purpose 
to assist, to correct, and to guide that life in matters 
of practical concern and in the perception of beauty 
and truth. 

In reviewing the literary history of this period we 
shall consider in order, first, the work of the essayists ; 
second, that of the novelists ; and lastly, the work of 
the poets — in their respective groups. 

First among the great writers of the new era to 
Thomas attract public attention was Thomas Babing- 
M?cauia°y, Macaulay. Brilliantly successful as an 

1800-59. historian and essayist, sensible, hard-headed, 
optimistic, full of faith in the institutions of his coun- 
try, and participating actively in the administration 
of her interests, Macaulay was throughout the second 
quarter of the century a conspicuous figure in the politi- 
cal life of England, as he was her foremost representa- 
tive in literature. 

Macaulay w^as born at Rothley Temple in Leicester- 
Parentage shire. His father, Zachary Macaulay, a man 
and Youth. Qf unusual force of character, was connected 
for many years with the Sierra Leone Company, had 
been placed in charge of the colony at Freetown on 
the African coast, and devoted his energies to the 
movement for abolishing the slave trade. His associ- 
ates were a band of philanthropists whose leader was 
Wilberforce. Mrs. Macaulay was of Quaker parent- 
age, had been a pupil of the noted Hannah More, and 
maintained an intimate friendship with that interest- 
ing woman. Throughout his youth Macaulay lived in 
an atmosphere of serious purpose, surrounded by the 
influences of noble, unselfish lives. Both parents ex- 



AT CAMBRIDGE 



391 



hibited rare judgment in the domestic training of their 
talented son. 

Macaulay's childhood was quiet and happy. He 
was an incessant reader from the time that he was three 
years old ; his favorite attitude was to lie stretched on 
the rug before the fire, with his book on the floor, and 
a piece of bread and butter in his hand. He was 
famous, while a boy, for his extraordinary memory and 
his ready absorption of books. He knew Scott's Lay 
of the Last Minstrel by heart before he was eight 
years old, and was inspired by its vigorous spirit to 
the composition of several epics, including a few swing- 
ing cantos upon the theme of King Olaf of Norway. 
Through life he retained this ability to absorb, 
almost at a glance, the contents of a page ; and what 
he thus read he never forgot. He declared that if 
the Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim'' s Progress were 
destroyed, he would undertake to replace both from 
memory. Amusing stories are told of his numerous 
literary activities and of his unusual command of 
language while a mere child ; of his sitting perched 
on the table, while the housemaid cleaned the silver, 
expounding to her out of a volume as big as himself ; 
of his compendium of universal history, written at 
seven, of his hymns, his odes, and his ballads — really 
extraordinary productions for a lad of his years.^ 

In his nineteenth year Macaulay entered Trinity 
College, Cambridge. He won special honors Atcam- 
in the classics and in oratory, and received a linage, 
fellowship in 1824. While a student he began writing 
for the reviews, and in 1824 made his first public ad- 
dress, in an abolitionist meeting. In 1825 appeared 
his first contribution to TJie Ldinhiirgh Review^ his 

1 For the fuller account o£ Macaulay's boyhood, read Trevelyan's 
Jjife and Letters of Lord Macaulay^ ch. i. 



392 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



famous essay on Milton. Like Byron, Macaulay found 
himself famous in a day. Compliments poured in 
from every side — best of all tlie word of the formida- 
ble Jeffrey, editor of the Review : " The more I think, 
the less I can conceive v^^here you picked up that 
style." It was not that a new literary method had 
been applied in the writing of reviews, but that a new 
master of English had appeared, whose style was as 
distinct from that of all other essayists as it was bril- 
liant and lofty. 

Macaulay was called to the bar in 1826 ; but he 
inPubUc never became prominent as a lawyer. His 
Life. public service was rendered through litera- 

ture. He entered Parliament in 1830, and delivered 
his maiden speech on the bill removing the Jewish dis- 
abilities. When he spoke upon the Reform Bill in 
March, 1831, the speaker declared that he had never 
seen the house in such a state of excitement. > Three 
years later Macaulay was made president of a new 
law commission for India and a member of the Supreme 
Council of Calcutta. In the execution of the duties 
connected with this appointment, he remained two and 
a half years in India, returning in 1838. The results 
of his work were the Indian Penal Code and the 
Code of Criminal Procedure. In 1859 and 1869 
these codes passed into law. Amid the exactions of 
his work in India, Macaulay yet found time for a vast 
amount of substantial reading, including almost the 
complete body of Greek and Roman literature. He 
also prepared and wrote the essay on Bacon. In 1839 
he was once more in Parliament, was made Secretary 
of War, and a member of the Privy Council. In 
party politics Macaulay was a Whig, a strong partisan, 
and visibly interested in all questions of public reform. 
As an orator he was a fluent and rapid speaker ; it was 



THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND 393 



tlie matter of his speech, his vivid language, his vehe- 
ment directness of manner, rather than the graces of 
eloquent utterances, that gave him power with an audi- 
ence. His public addresses were carefully prepared 
essays ; but it is equally true that as an essayist he 
wrote in the style of the orator. 

Between the publication of the essay on Milton in 
1825, and that on Bacon in 1837, Macaulay Literary 
had found time to prepare no less than fifteen Labors, 
notable articles for the Edinburgh Review^ of which 
those upon MacMavelli^ Dryden^ Byron^ and Johnson 
are, perhaps, most important. In 1840 appeared the 
essay on Clive ; in 1841 that upon Warren Hastings — 
two of his most picturesque and eloquent productions. 
In these essays he made use of the rich material gath- 
ered during his residence in India. The Lays of 
Aiicient Borne were published in 1842. Stirring and 
vivid portrayals of ancient Roman virtue, — the virtue 
that embodied the idea of courage and expressed itself 
in acts of patriotic devotion, — these Lays in the vigor- 
ous ballad measure form no insignificant contribution 
to English verse. They are in some degree typical of 
their author's spirit and character. The essays upon 
Frederick the Greats Madame D^Arhlay^ Addison^ 
and Pitt were written between 1842 and 1844. 

It is, however, the History of England which re- 
presents, in its greatest achievement, the The History 
genius of Macaulay. As early as 1841, of England. 
Macaulay had written to his friend Napier : — 

" I have at last begun my historical labors — I can hardly 
say with how much interest and delight. I really do not 
think there is in our literature so great a void as that which 
I am trying to supply. English history from 1688 to the 
French Revolution is, even to educated people, almost a 
terra incognita. . . . The materials for an amusing narra- 



394 FROM WORDSWOETH TO TENNYSON 

tive are immense. I shall not be satisfied unless I produce 
something which shall, for a few days, supersede the last 
fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." 

In the intervals between other labors the historian 
worked for ten years, until in 1849 the first two 
volumes appeared. The success of Macaulay's Eng- 
land was unprecedented. The first edition was sold in 
ten days; the second, as soon as printed. In America 
six different editions were issued, and the sales imme- 
diately after publication were estimated at 60,000 
copies.^ In 1855 volumes iii. and iv. were ready. The 
work was translated into all the civilized languages, 
and the success of the earlier volumes was redupli- 
cated. In the autumn of 1856 part iii. of the History 
was begun ; but Macaulay did not live to complete 
this task. He carried the narrative down to the year 
1700, and this portion of the work was subsequently 
edited by his niece, Lady Trevelyan, as volume v. 

Macaulay's History is the most picturesque history 
of England ever written. Its author possessed in 
rare degree the " historical imagination," which en- 
abled him to see, and then vividly describe, the scenes 
and events of his narrative. His wonderful command 
of language, his powers of description and narration, 
enabled him to invest details with all the attractive- 
ness of romance. For the interpretation of history 
Macaulay was unsuited ; he believed heartily in the 
upward progress of society, but he made no profound 
study of historical movements a:s' related to cause and 
effect. It was the panorama of history rather than its 
philosophy that he was qualified to present. 

Many distinguished honors were bestowed upon the 
historian, both at home and abroad. One of the most 
highly prized had been received in his election as Lord 
^ See Treyelyan's Life, vol. ii. ch. 11. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



395 



Rector of Glasgow University, in 1849. In 1857 he 
was raised to the peerage by the queen, as- 
suming the title Baron of Rothley. Failing- 
health forbade his active participation in public affairs, 
but he kept busily employed at his History until 
the end. His death occurred as he sat in his library 
at Holly Lodge, Kensington. He was buried near 
Johnson, Goldsmith, and Addison, in the Poets' Corner 
of Westminster Abbey. 

The working period of Macaulay's life followed that 
of the revolutionary group ; although contemporary 
with De Quincey and Wordsworth, there was nothing 
of the romanticist in his temperament or his method. 
Not gifted with fancy or sentiment, he could not ap- 
preciate the beauty or the imaginative power of their 
work. He moved on the common level of life, was 
proud of the material advance of the nation, and 
sought to promote its material interests. He was em- 
phatically an optimist, and saw no lesson more impres- 
sive than that of progress in the record he had traced. 

The essays on Johnson, Goldsmith, Milton, and Addison, 
edited by W. P. Trent, are included in Numbers suggestions 
102, 103, 104 of the Riverside Literature Series, tor study, 
and may very well be selected for special study. Either 
the essay on Clive, or that on Warren Hastings, should be 
added to this group. The essay on History should also be 
read, to discover Macaulay's ideas upon historical writing. 
In the reading of these various essays appropriate compari- 
sons between Macaulay and the earlier essayists will suggest 
themselves. The student should investigate the occasion 
for the publication of these essays and the significance of 
the term review. For the analysis of Macaulay's style, the 
section upon the essayist in Minto's English Prose Litera- 
ture (Ginn) is ahnost indispensable ; but even a superficial 
study will develop Macaulay's great facihty in epigram, his 
frequent resort to antithesis, and his love for the balanced 



396 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

structure in sentence construction. Numerous examples of 
these elements may easily be found. The rajDid, vivacious 
movement of his composition cannot be overlooked. 

The Life and Letters of Lord Macaiday by his nephew, 
G. O. Trevelyan, is the standard biography ; it is reviewed 
by Gladstone in the Quarterly Review (1876). Macaulay 
in the English Men of Letters Series is by J. C. Morrison. 
The section upon Macaulay in Minto's English Prose 
Writers is the best general discussion of his distinctive style 
as a writer. 

Unconventional, rugged, and stern, inspired with a 

robust idealism and a passionate zeal for 
Thomas . ^ 
Cariyle, righteousness, Thomas Carlyle appears among 
1795-1881. ^jjg essayists of the Victorian age like a later 
Langland, flinging himself forth in fierce epics of 
prose. He was, like Burns, born of plain Scotch 
peasant stock. His father, James Carlyle, a sturdy 
stone-mason in the homely little town of Ecclefechan, 
Dumfriesshire, was a man of pronounced individuality, 
strong-willed, speaking his mind bluntly and forcibly, 
and commanding the wholesome respect of his neigh- 
bors. 

" I have a sacred pride for my peasant father," wrote 
Thomas Carlyle just after his father's death, "and would 
not exchange him, even now, for any king known to me. 
Gold and the guinea stamp — the Man and the Clothes of 
the Man ! " 

His mother was a gentle, affectionate woman, whose 
only fault, in the words of her son, was " her being 
too mild and peaceful for the planet she lived in." 

Carlyle was intended by his parents for the Church ; 
so he, the eldest of nine sons, was taught 
Education. ^|^^ rudiments of Latin by the minister, and, 
after a brief course in the high school at Annan, was 
sent to the University at Edinburgh — not quite six- 



CRAIGENPUTTOCH 



397 



teen years old. He was a hard student, especially in 
the classics. For mathematics he showed special apti- 
tude, and afterward taught that science in the high 
schools of Annan and Kirkcaldy. He was, moreover, 
at one time a candidate for the professorship of as- 
tronomy in Glasgow University. Carlyle's rapidly 
developing genius was recognized by his intimate asso- 
ciates, and he soon became the oracle of a little band 
of students, ambitious and poor — like himself. 

The years following his graduation were gloomy ones 
for Carlyle. His health was wretched ; dys- years of 
pepsia, "gnawing like a rat at his stomach," struggle, 
had already begun to torment him. He had fallen 
into a great bitterness of doubt — doubt concerning 
the existence of a God, doubt in respect to human 
character — worst doubt of all, the doubt of himself. 
His plans for the ministry were long since abandoned. 
He tried school teaching, and disliked it heartily. At 
last, with the necessity of labor upon him, he settled, 
in 1818, at Edinburgh, determined to follow literature, 
and began to live by his pen. Such hack-work as he 
could get he did ; read French, Spanish, and Ger- 
man, especially the last, and in 1823 began his Life, 
of Schiller in the London Magazine and published a 
translation of Goethe's great romance Wilhelm Meister, 
With Coleridge and De Quincey, Carlyle shares the 
honor of introducing English readers to the rich store 
of German literature. Finally the Edinburgh student 
conquered his skepticism and emerged into an atmos- 
phere of clear and positive belief. 

In 1826 Carlyle had married Jane Welsh, a lively, 
talented woman, who had a genuine taste for craigen- 
literature and a great admiration for her P^'^^och. 
husband's genius. Two years later they settled upon 
a small estate belonging to Mrs. Carlyle at Craigen- 



398 



FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



puttoch ; and there, for six years, they lived a rather 
isolated life. 

The necessity for utterance was upon Carlyle, as well 
Sartor ^^^^ necessity of a livelihood. He must 

Resartus. speak forth the thoughts that were burning 
within him ; but he must speak his thought in his own 
peculiar way. Editors refused to admit his articles 
to their pages because of their singular, apparently 
uncouth style ; but Carlyle was not to be moved ; he 
should be read as he wrote, or not at all. Thus it was 
not until 1833 that his first great work, the Sartor 
Resartus^ after having been rejected by several edi- 
tors, at last found a place in Fraser''s Magazine. But 
once published this singular essay began to attract 
attention. 

The Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Repatched) is a 
remarkable philosophy of clothes — clothes being re- 
garded as the vestitures, or symbols, of what they cover. 
The sham and hypocrisy of life arouse the scornful 
laughter of the philosopher, who through a method 
unique in literature propounds his ideas of duty and 
preaches his doctrine of faith. It is the story of 
Carlyle's own personal struggle with his doubts that 
he embodies in this extraordinary work ; his own 
philosophy of life which he here flashes forth in brief 
and disconnected gleams of light amid the obscurities 
and complications of his romantic masquerade. It 
is Carlyle himself who discourses under the guise 
of the erudite Professor Teufelsdrockh, who fills the 
chair of Things-in-General at the University of No- 
One-Knows-Where. It was his own intense purpose 
that was voiced in that ringing appeal at the close of 
the famous chapter in The Everlasting Yea : — 

" I too could now say to myself : Be no longer a Chaos, 
hut a World, or even Worldkin. Produce ! Produce ! Were 



LECTURER AND HISTORIAN 399 



it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, 
produce it in God's name ! ' T is the utmost thou hast in 
thee : out with it then. Up, up ! Whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it 
is caUed To-day ; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can 
work." 

In spite of its singular form, the Sartor Resartus 
must be recognized as one of the most stimulating and 
impressive books of the century. 

In 1834 the family removed to Chelsea in the suburbs 
of London, and three years later Carlyle ap- 
peared in a course of six public lectures upon and Histo- 
German literature. A year later this was 
followed by a course of twelve lectures on the succes- 
sive Periods of European Culture ; and in 1839 by a 
series upon The Revolutions of Modern Europe. The 
famous course On Heroes^ Hero Worship^ and the He- 
roic in History ^2,?, given in 1840. The matter and the 
manner of these lectures made a profound sensation in 
literary London. " It was," said Leigh Hunt, " as if 
some Puritan had come to life again, liberalized by 
German philosophy and his own intense reflections and 
experiences." The central thought in this, one of Car- 
lyle's most characteristic works, is that " universal his- 
tory, the history of what man has accomplished in this 
world, is at bottom the history of the great men who 
have worked here." In proof of his idea, he therefore 
treats in the successive lectures of (1) the hero as 
divinity^ taking Odin for his type, (2) as prophet^ 
using Mahomet for illustration, (3) as ^oe^, with Dante 
and Shakespeare for examples, (4) as priest^ making 
Luther and Knox the central figures, (5) as man of 
letters^ finding three literary heroes in J ohnson. Burns, 
and Kousseau, (6) as hing^ Cromwell and Napoleon 
standing for the qualities he exalts. 



400 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 

Since his arrival in London Carlyle had been busy 
upon his historical studies. In 1837 the work was 
completed and the History of the French Revolution 
appeared. Its author's fame was now assured. With 
an extraordinary skill he portrayed the figures promi- 
nent in that struggle, and with almost appalling real- 
ism painted the events of that dramatic epoch. The 
peculiarities of his style were not inappropriate to the 
theme. The work was recognized as a masterpiece in 
its kind. 

In Chartism (1839), Past and Present (1843), 
and Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Carlyle's 
Essays^and criticism of society grows querulous ; he 
Biogra- works upon a distinctly lower level than in 
P^ies. j^.^ earlier essays. But CromweW s Letters 
and Speeches (1845) and the Life of John Sterling 
(1851) are model biographies and belong with his best 
works. Finally his History of the Life and Times of 
Frederich^ commonly Called the Great (1858-65), 
came as a fitting climax to his literary labors. 

Just after delivering his remarkable address at 
Glasgow, upon his installation as Lord Rector of the 
University, in April, 1866 — the crowning honor of 
his life — he received the news of his wife's death. By 
this event Carlyle was completely broken ; although he 
lived until 1881, honored by the world which he had 
criticised and often abused, he produced nothing further 
of importance. 

It is, after all, as a teacher that Carlyle is to be re- 
place In garded ; and as has been true of many another, 
Literature, ^.j^g spirit in which he taught and the manner 
of his teaching have proved of greater value to the 
world he endeavored to instruct than the mere matter 
of the lessons in the course. Thomas Carlyle is one of 
the great original influences in the moral life of his 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



401 



century. The stimulus of his vigorous, pitiless pen is 
felt in the thought and sympathies of scores of lesser 
teachers who, perh&,ps, have worked unconscious of 
their debt to him. 

Selections from Carlyle, edited by H. W. Boynton (AUyn 
& Bacon), contains the essay on History, the suggestions 
essays on Burns and BoswelVs Johnson, and the ior Study, 
two lectures on The Hero as Poet and The Hero as Man 
of Letters. These selections will furnish a good introduc- 
tion to Carlyle. In undertaking the study of Sartor Resar- 
tus, the student should have the text edited by Archibald 
MacMechan, in the Athenoeum Press Series (Ginn). The 
ideas advanced in these essays should not be slipped over 
without consideration and discussion. The verbal oddities, 
the coinage of new words, the grotesque use of old ones, 
should be noted and investigated ; striking examples may 
well be recorded as interesting specimens of peculiar usage. 
The composition of sentences should be studied, and the de- 
scription of Teufelsdrockh's failings in this regard be read 
in chapter iv. of Sartor Resartus. Carlyle's remarkable 
imagery, his figures of speech, will attract attention ; note 
the sources from which they are drawn and the effectiveness 
with which they are applied. Find illustrations of his power 
in ridicule, in pathos, in humor. Study the humor of Car- 
lyle ; it is unique in its quality and its expression. Note the 
extraordinary earnestness and evident sincerity of his style. 
Examine his portraitures of persons, of their appearance, 
their character. Energy rather than grace will be found 
to be a marked distinction of Carlyle. 

The chief biographer of Carlyle is J. A. Froude, although 
his taste in editing the papers of the essayist has Brief Bibll- 
been severely criticised. The Carlyle in the Eng- ography. 
lish Men of Letters Series is by J. Nichol ; the Life in the 
Great Writers Series is by Richard Garnett. The Remi- 
niscences of Carlyle himself are edited by C. E. Norton. 
There are important essays upon Carlyle by Lowell in My 
Study Windows, by E. P. Whipple in Essays and Reviews, 



402 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



4' 



by Emerson in English Traits, and by Matthew Arnold in 
Discourses in America. A suggestive piece of criticism is 
Augustine Birrell's Carlyle in Obiter Dicta. 

For the analysis of Carlyle 's prose style, see Minto's Eng- 
lish Prose Writers (Ginn). 

John Ruskin, third in this group of the great essay- 
^^j^ ists, is in many aspects of his work sympa- 

Ruskin, thetically related to Carlyle. In the latter 
1819-1900. more characteristic period of his life, the 
resemblance is marked. Both men spoke boldly on the 
great principles of human conduct ; both threw them- 
selves passionately into their books. The style of each 
was distinct, but there was a similarity of temper : the 
same fiery heat of conviction in their expression, the 
same passion for truth and justice in both. They came 
of the common stock, and were proud of that distinc- 
tion : — 

" My mother was a sailor's daughter, and, please you, one 
of my aunts was a baker's wife, the other a tanner's ; and I 
don't know much more about my family, except that there 
used to be a green-grocer of the name in a small shop near 
the Crystal Palace," 

wrote Ruskin in one of his letters to workingmen.^ 

Their lives were devoted to the moral education of 
their countrymen ; their genius was spent in bringing 
their own idealism to bear upon the experiences of 
common life. 

John Ruskin was born in London. His father was 
Boyhood ^ merchant who had grown wealthy in 

and Early trade. Upon his death his son caused this 
Tastes. inscription, " He was an entirely honest 
merchant," to be placed as his tribute to the integrity 
of the man. Ruskin's mother was a person of cultured 
tastes, a strict disciplinarian, vitally interested in the 
education and moral training of her son. 

1 Fors Clavigera. 



THE STUDENT OF ART 



403 



" Being always summarily whipped," lie says, " if I cried, 
did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon at- 
tained serene and secure methods of life and motion." ^ 

Both parents were lovers of good pictures and good 
books ; and under favoring conditions the boy came to 
discriminate and appreciate the best in literature and 
art. He read daily with his mother: on week days 
from Pope's Homer or the novels of Scott : on Sun- 
days Robinson Crusoe and the Pilgrim'' s Progress. 
Evenings his father was accustomed to read aloud 
from Scott, Shakespeare, Byron, or Cervantes ; a?fU to 
these readings he was privileged to listen. J?ith the 
Bible, more than with any other book, Jo]m Ruskin.^ 
was made familiar ; and to this feature of his ear^ 
training he attributed the possession of those qualities 
which give such distinction to his prose style. Under 
his parents' direction, too, he grew familiar with the 
beauty of flower and foliage, the charm of landscape, 
and the best productions of creative art. In summer 
excursions the family traveled through the most pic- 
turesque parts of England and Scotland, visiting the 
points of principal historic interest, inspecting the pic- 
ture galleries, studying both nature and art by the way. 
Upon his fourteenth birthday the boy received from his 
father as a gift a copy of Rogers's Italy^ illustrated 
by Turner. The next summer he saw for the first time 
Italy and the Alps ; this experience he ever afterward 
regarded as his entrance into life. 

In 1836, at the age of seventeen, Ruskin became a 
student in Christ Church College, Oxford. The student 
He won the Newdigate prize in the competi- °* 
tion in verse, with his poem Salsette and Elephant and 
contributed to various magazine articles upon paint- 
ing and architecture. In 1840 he left the University 

1 PrcBterita. 



404 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



on account of poor health, and for two years traveled 
much upon the continent and in England. He was 
able, however, to receive his degree in 1842. Like 
Carlyle, Ruskin had been intended for the Church ; but 
the allurements of art were too strong to be ignored ; he 
determined to devote his life to study and criticism, 
and followed up his resolve by publishing the first vol- 
ume of Modern Painters in 1843. 

From the appearance of the first volume of this 
The Period ^^^^^ work in 1843 until the publication of 
of Art criti- the last in 1860, John Kuskin was recognized 
as the foremost authority in art criticism, and 
as a master of English composition. His earliest criti- 
cism was a defense of the methods of the English 
artist, J. M. W. Turner, whom he ranked as " the great- 
est painter of all time." In the successive volumes of 
Modern Painters^ with a diction and style unrivaled 
in English literature, Ruskin discussed, not only the 
productions, but the abstract principles of art. The 
great lesson that he taught was the fundamental impor- 
tance of Truth. The main business of art, as he 
declared, " is its service in the actual uses of daily 
life." " The giving of brightness to pictures is much, 
but the giving brightness to life, more." Two other 
important works, together with several of relatively 
minor importance, belong to this period of his life : The 
Seven Lamps of Architectiire aipj)esiYed in 1849, /Stones 
of Venice in 1851-53 ; in both the writer dwelt strenu- 
ously upon the moral aspects of art. Ruskin's intimate 
connection with the group of the Pre-Raphaelites, includ- 
ing William Morris, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Burne- 
Jones, and Sir John Millais, was emphasized by the 
publication of Pre-PapJiaelitism in 1851. Here he 
defined the leading principle of that famous brother- 
hood to be the painting 



THE ETHICAL TEACHER 



405 



of things as they probably did look and happen, not as, by 
rules of art developed under Raphael, they might be sup- 
posed gracefully, deliciously, or sublimely to have happened." 

The year 1860 marks a turning'-point in Euskin's 
career. The practical needs of men now The Ethical 
forced themselves, to the exclusion of all other Teacher, 
subjects, upon his thought. He became a teacher of 
practical ethics, a political economist, a student of socio- 
logical problems, and a promulgator of ideas which 
were then considered radical and unsafe — doctrines 
that aroused hostility, even contempt. Unto this Last 
(1860) and Munera Pulveris (1863) were the works in 
which he outlined the principles of his social science. 
The relations between employer and employed, the 
problem of wages, the basis of the science in absolute 
justice, the real sources of wealth, the evils of the com- 
petitive system, the rights of property — these and kin- 
dred topics were discussed in a spirit entirely new to 
the readers of that time ; it is a fact, however, that 
almost all the propositions then thought so dangerous 
to the interests of the state have been either adopted or 
seriously discussed by the practical economists of the 
present. 

In the first of a series of ninety-six monthly letters 
addressed to the workingmen of England under the 
peculiar title Fors Clamgera ^ (1871-78), Ruskin de- 
scribes characteristically his personal attitude at that 
time and the reasons for it : — 

" For my own part," he says, " I will put up with this state 

^ In the second of these Letters Rnskin defines this enig-Tnatieal title : 
Fors may mean Force, Fortitude, or Fortune ; Clava, a Ciub, Clavis, a 
Key, Clavus, a Nail; Gero means I carry. From these meanings, 
therefore, we may interpret the title in three ways : — 

Fors, the Cluh-hearer, means the strength of Hercules, or of Deed. 

Fors, the Key-hearer, means the strength of Ulysses, or of Patience. 

Fors, the Nail-hearer, means the strength of Lycurgus, or of Law. 



406 



FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



of things, passively, not an hour longer. I am not an unselfish 
person, nor an Evangelical one ; I have no particular pleasure 
in doing good ; neither do I dislike doing it so much as to ex- 
pect to be rewarded for it in another world. But I simply 
cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything 
else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky, when 
there is any — which is seldom, nowadays, near London — 
has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know 
of, and see signs of where I know it not, which no imagina- 
tion can interpret too bitterly." 

In this spirit, and with this determination, he wrote 
and taught throughout the pages of the twenty-three or 
twenty-four books published during this second period 
of his life. 

In Sesame and Lilies (1865), his most popular 
Remaining 6ssay, Kuskin discourses of Kings' Treasuries 
Works. and of Queens'' Gardens : the first deals with 
books and reading ; the second with the education 
and duties of women. The Crown of Wild Olive 
(1866) contains three lectures on Worh^ Traffic^ and 
War. The Queen of the Air (1869) is a study of 
Greek myths of Cloud and Storm. Love's Meinie 
(1873) is a study of Birds; Proserpina (1874) a 
study of Wayside Flowers. In Ethics of the Dust 
(1865) Kuskin gives a series of charming Lectures to 
Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallization ; 
in Deucalion (1876) a series of Studies on the Lapse 
of Waves and the Life of Stones. Several volumes of 
lectures upon art ^ are also included among his many 
works. Finally, in 1887, a most interesting autobiogra- 
phy, under the title Prceterita^ appeared, his final work. 

The burden of Ruskin's message to the world has 
been to open men's eyes to the beauty that is in nature, 

1 For the most part delivered at Oxford, where Ruskin held the 
Slade Lectureship on Art. 



THEORY IN LIFE 



407 



in true art, and in riglit life. No other has ever ap- 
proached him, even among the poets, in the de- Tneory in 
scription of river and rock, of plant and leaf, i-i^e. 
of cloud and sky — of all natural phenomena — in that 
imaginative vision which sees into the life of things. 
A wave breaking upon the rocks is " one moment a 
flint cave ; the next a marble pillar ; the next a mere 
white fleece thickening the thundery rain." The ser- 
pent is " that running brook of horror on the ground," 
"that rivulet of smooth silver;" "startle it, — the 
winding stream will become a twisted arrow ; the wave 
of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast 
lance." His sense of color is a revelation : in describing 
the effect of light upon an opaque white mass like a 
cloud, an Alp, or Milan Cathedral, he talks of amber 
tints, of orange, of rose, of lemon yellows, of vermilion, 
of flamingo color, canary ; of blushes and flames of 
color ; when the cloud is transparent, then he speaks of 
golden and ruby colors, of scarlets, of Tyrian crimson 
and Byzantine purple ; of full blue at the zenith, and 
green blue nearer the horizon, 

" the keynote of the opposition being vermilion against green 
blue, both of equal tone, and at such a height and acme of 
brilliancy that you cannot see the line where their edges pass 
into each other." 

To see these things, to be impressed by them, and to 
be influenced thereby for good : this is the purpose of 
his teaching. The first article subscribed to by the 
members of St. George's Guild, a socialistic society 
established by Ruskin in 1873, is as follows : — 

" I trust in the living God, Father Almighty, Maker of 
Heaven and Earth, and of all things and creatures, visible 
and invisible. I trust in the kindness of His law, and the 
goodness of His work. And I wiU strive to love Him and 
to keep His law, and to see His work while I live.'' 



408 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



The social theories he had propounded Kuskin did 
his best to realize in practical experiments, to which he 
devoted the bulk of his fortune ; the sympathies to 
which he had so fervently appealed found consistent 
expression in his personal relations with men. He 
established museums, art schools, and libraries, assisted 
young men and women to get an education, organized 
movements for improving the dwellings of the poor. 
His influence over his students and among the readers 
of his essays has been very marked. Modern move- 
ments in socialistic directions have embodied many of 
his ideas. 

The last years of John Ruskin's life were spent in 
retirement upon his estate of Brantwood, on Lake Con- 
iston, in the country of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Southey ; here he died, in his eightieth year, January 
20, 1900. 

As a text-hook for the study of Ruskin, the volume of Se- 
Suggestions lections edited by Mrs. L. G. Hufford (Ginn) is 
for Study. admirable. A smaller volume, An Introduction 
to the Writings of John HusJdn, edited by Yida D. Scudder 
(Sibley & Ducker), contains briefer passages and single 
paragraphs illustrative of Raskin's peculiar style. The two 
essays of Sesame and Lilies'^ would best be taken as the 
first selections to be read. It will be found helpful to make 
an outline of each essay, that the student may clearly trace 
the progress of the thought and fix the specific points main- 
tained. Notice particularly Ruskin's statements concerning 
the motives for securing an education, his comments upon 
" books," how to read books, his analysis of the passage 
from Lycidas, the sympathetic attitude toward authors, his 
denunciation of the commercial spirit in the British public, 
the childishness of the nation, the discussion cff false kings 
and true, and the description of the ideal library. These 
points are brought out- in the first lecture : what are the 

1 Published in Number 142 of the Riverside Literature Series. 



BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 



409 



links that logically connect these successive topics ? Ana- 
lyze the second lecture. What is its relation to the first ? 
What is its final purpose ? What do you think of the 
part given to woman in the social order? What use is 
made of "books" in the argument? Do you accept the 
statements regarding Shakespeare's heroes and heroines ? 
Is it not odd that Ruskin does not produce George Eliot 
among his witnesses ? What is Ruskin's plan for the educa- 
tion of women ? Do you agree with him that women should 
not undertake the study of theology ? How does the essay- 
ist differentiate the girl's nature from the boy's — woman's 
work from man's ? 

The Queen of the Air is suggested as the next volume for 
study. Mrs. Hufford's analysis of the work will be found 
very helpful in keeping the relations of the various parts 
distinct. Notice the beautiful descriptive paragraphs so 
numerous in these essays ; study the diction closely, — the 
marvelous significance of words, the startling effectiveness 
of phrase. Notice also the didactic element, the sermonizing 
quality, in the work. 

The three essays taken from Unto this Last and the six 
letters from Fors Clavigera should be read as illustrating 
Ruskin's views upon economic problems. The Crown of 
Wild Olive should be read by every young man ; Ethics of 
the Dust by every young woman. Selections, at least, from 
Modern Painters and Stones of Venice must be read by all 
who would know of Ruskin as the great word artist of our 
language and be familiar with his famous interpretations 
of nature and art. His wonderful descriptive power, his 
splendor of diction, his impetuous eloquence, are to be found 
in these works as nowhere else. 

The authoritative Life of Ruskin is that by W. G. Col- 
lingwood (2 vols.) The Ruskin in the English Brief Eibli- 
Men of Letters Series is by Frederick Harrison, ography. 
Critical studies are numerous ; the following are most help- 
ful : John Ruskin, His Life and Teaching, by J. R. 
Mather ; The Work of John Ruskin, by Charles Wald- 
stein ; and John RtLskin, Social Reformer, by J. A. Hobson. 

I 



410 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



John Riiskin (personal reminiscences), by M. H. Spielmann, 
and the chapter on Ruskin in Frederick Harrison's Tenny- 
son, Ruskin, and Other Literary Estimates, are recent and 
valuable. A beautifully illustrated article upon Ruskin as 
an Artist, by M. H. Spielmann, in Scribner's Magazine for 
December, 1898, will be especially interesting. Critical ar- 
ticles of some value were published by Julia Wedgewood, in 
the Contemporary Review, March, 1900 ; by W . C. Brown- 
ell, in Scrihner's Magazine, April, 1900 ; and by W. P. P. 
Longfellow, in the Forum, May, 1900. A bitterly hostile 
criticism appeared in Blackwood's for March of the same 
year. Ruskin's picturesque account of his own life in PrcB' 
terita must not be overlooked. 



iccount 01 



In the criticism of life and conduct, the essays of 
Matthew Matthew Arnold hold an important place. 
Arnold, Son of the famous Arnold of Rugby, a gradu- 
1822-88. ^£ ^^^^ school and of Oxford^ Matthew 

Arnold has won distinction as an apostle of Culture, 
as a means of attaining the ideal type. The tone of 
his criticism has been purely intellectual, often super- 
cilious, and more likely to awaken prejudice than popu- 
larity. The literary quality of his work places him 
with the best of our prose writers. His style is viva- 
cious, without enthusiasm, terse and luminous. His 
manner is severely classical, as far as possible removed 
from the rough impetuosity of Carlyle and the ornate 
eloquence of Macaulay or Ruskin. An undertone of 
skepticism and despondency runs through all of 
Arnold's work ; but his impartiality of judgment, his 
keen, passionless intellect, his almost infallible taste, 
make his criticism in the highest degree valuable. His 
Essays in Criticism (1865), including the essay on 
The Inunction of Criticism at the Present Time, fur- 
nished a model in this field of literary art. Besides 
this volume and a second series of Essays in Criticism 



1 



WALTER PATER 



411 



(1888), Arnold's principal prose works are Culture 
and Anarchy (1869), Literature and Dogma (1873), 
and the Discourses in America (1885). 

Matthew Arnold holds high rank, also, among the 
Victorian poets ; the same qualities characterizing his 
poetry as characterize his prose, the skepticism and the 
melancholy giving a tone more impressively pessimistic 
to the former. His poems are the finest expressions of 
the pnrely classic spirit in our literature. The Scholar 
Gypsy^ Thyrsis (like Adonais, an elegy upon the death 
of a poet — in this instance Arthur Hugh Clough), the 
/Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse^ and the epic of 
Sohrcd) and Hustum are the best examples of his verse. 

Arnold was born at Laleham in Middlesex. He was 
for a long period Inspector of Schools and actively em- 
ployed in the improvement of the public school sys- 
tem of England. For ten years (1857-67) he filled 
the chair of poetry at Oxford. He visited America 
(1883-84) and lectured in several cities, but was not 
very sympathetically received. 

Like Arnold — a pronounced classicist in literary 

taste — Walter Pater stands hioh amons^ re- „ , 

Walter 

cent prose writers. His volume of literary Pater, 
criticism, entitled Appreciations^ imth an ^8^9"®^' 
Essay on Style (1889), suggests a distinct resemblance 
to the critical methods of Arnold. The Imaginary 
Portraits (1887) remind us of Landor's Conversa- 
tions^ although entirely original in conception and 
performance. Pater's most popular work, Marius the 
Epicurean^ is a remarkable portraiture of pagan char- 
acter. It is the fictitious biography of a Roman youth 
who, interested in the philosophies of his time, passes 
through many experiences mentally and spiritually, at 
last coming in contact with the adherents of the new 
faith. His other works include studies of The He- 



412 FROM WORDSWOKTH TO TENNYSON 



naissance, Plato and Platonism^ a series of Greek 
Studies^ and a volume of miscellaneous essays. The 
essayist lived a secluded life largely within the Uni- 
versity precincts (he was a fellow of Brasenose College, 
Oxford), devoting himself to study and the perfection 
of his exquisite style. 

VI. MATURITY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL : DICKENS, 
THACKERAY, GEORGE ELIOT. 

Among the literary movements of the past century 
there is none more interesting or more significant than 
that which had its climax in the art of three great 
novelists, whose common power in the delineation of 
life and the portrayal of character may well be taken 
as the highest expression yet made of the possibilities 
that lie in the field of prose fiction. The evolution of 
the modern novel is an impressive proof of our highly 
developed interest in the problems and struggles of real 
life. Not only has this form of imaginative composi- 
tion been employed to portray manners, temperaments, 
and types ; it has become in the hands of thought- 
ful men and women a valuable instrument for the illus- 
tration of ideas upon every conceivable subject, in the 
fields of sociology, commerce, religion, politics, and 
even of medicine ; until at the close of the old century 
and the beginning of the new, the novel appears as the 
chief form of literary expression, its scope bounded only 
by the fundamental principles of all imaginative art, 
and with a hold upon the public interest as noteworthy 
as the wonderful fertility manifested in its production. 

The history of English fiction is a record of two 
contending influences : the preference for idealization 
in the delineation of life, and the preference for a 
faithful report of close observation and analysis ; the 
former is illustrated in the methods of the roman- 



JANE AUSTEN 



413 



ticists, the latter in those of the realists. While the 
terms romanticism and realism are some- ipi^econ- 
times rather broadly used, especially in the trastea 
later classification of novelists, the two ten- 
dencies indicated are generally clear : the realism of 
the eighteenth century novelists is one thing ; the 
romanticism of Scott is obviously another. The 
method of each group is legitimate, and the work of 
each school is excellent in its own degree. 

" We are by nature both realists and idealists," says Cross,^ 
" delighting in the long run about equally in the represen- 
tation of life somewhat as it is and as it is dreamed to be. 
There is accordingly no time in which art does not to some 
extent minister to both instincts of human nature. But in 
one period the ideal is in the ascendency ; in another the 
real." 

At the very beginning of the century there were not 
wanting experiments in the realistic study of ^^^^^ 
life. Miss Edgeworth was the author of some Edgeworth, 
admirable Irish tales in which she endeav- ^767-1849. 
ored to portray the actual condition of the Irish peas- 
antry as she had observed it. Her Castle Raekrent 
(1800) and The Absentee (1812) are the best examples 
of her work. Three later novels — Leonora^ Patron- 
age^ Belinda — represent a serious attempt to repro- 
duce types in fashionable life. These tales were told 
with a moral purpose in view. 

By far the most clever realist of that day was J ane 
Austen, who, although mockingly referred to j^^^^ 
as " poor little Jane " by certain critics of Austen, 
our own time, has nevertheless more than 
held her own with novel readers even of the present. 
The life of this gifted woman was most simple and 
most quiet. Her home was a village rectory in Hamp- 

^ Wilbur L. Cross, The Development of the English Novel (Macmillan). 



414: FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



shire ; her only dissipation an occasional visit to the 
fashionable watering-place, Bath. No notable incidents 
appear to have broken the calm current of her daily 
life ; no serious romance is known to have absorbed her 
mind. Quietly as she lived she wrote. Her intimate 
friends were hardly aware of her occupation or her 
talent. And it is a very quiet phase of life that Jane 
Austen has described, although her art is strong enough 
to make commonplace scenes appear eventful and the 
commonest characters important. There had been no 
one since Fielding and Sterne gifted with such power 
in the realistic touches which exhibit character; and 
Miss Austen's realism was more refined if not more sub- 
tle than theirs. The most sensational occurrence in her 
pages is an elopement which ends with a due respect 
for the proprieties. The moral purpose is strong in 
Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Preju- 
dice (1813), her most ambitious novels — the titles of 
which suggest the lessons they inculcate. Northanger 
Abbey (1818) is written in the spirit of satire, and the 
humorous misadventures of the romantically inclined 
young heroine are shafts capitally aimed against the 
grotesque romances of the Udolpho type. Miss Aus- 
ten was a minute observer : microscopic is the word 
to be used of her method in observation and treatment. 
With painstaking accuracy each detail of every pro- 
cess is described. Sir Walter paid her a remarkable 
compliment : — 

" That young lady has a talent for describing the involve- 
ments of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to 
me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow 
strain I can do myself, like any now going ; but the exquisite 
touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and char- 
acters interesting from the truth of the description and the 
sentiment is denied to me." 



EDWAED BULWER-LYTTON 



415 



So far as this applies to Jane Austen, Scott's words 
are eminently true. Besides the works already men- 
tioned, Miss Austen wrote also Mansfield Park (1814), 
Emma (1816), and Persuasion (1818). Pride and 
Prejudice is her ablest novel. These stories were pub- 
lished anonymously, and although the secret of their 
authorship leaked out, they were never avowed by Miss 
Austen as her work. Their real merit was not gener- 
ally appreciated until after the early death of their 
author, but the fame which came so tardily shows no 
sioTi of waning:. Next to Scott there is nb author of 
that time whose works are read with so much real 
enjoyment to-day as quiet, homely, wholesome Jane 
Austen. 

Dominated in his best efforts by the powerful in- 
fluence of Scott's great historical romances, 
Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, was the chief Buiwef- 
exemplar in that school of fiction during the Ly^^on. 
second quarter of the century. But his work 
does not all of it represent the romantic school. A 
man of remarkable versatility and industry, he pub- 
lished three novels, — Pelham (1828), Paid Clifford 
(1830), and Eugene Aram (1832) ; the first intro- 
duces a hero who is representative of high life and 
enters politics ; the other two are studies in criminal 
character, the second exposing the bad effects of " a 
vicious prison discipline and a sanguinary criminal 
code." These were followed by four historical novels 
of wide popularity and genuine power, — The Last 
Days of Pompeii (1834), Pdenzi (1835), The Last 
of the Barons (1843), and Harold (1843). In these 
works Bulwer's romanticism is at its best. He is more 
serious in his purpose to relate history than is Scott, 
less successful in the construction of narrative ; yet 
the first named of the series is perhaps the most widely 



416 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



read work in historical fiction. Somewhat in the spirit 
of Sterne, Bulwer produced The Caxtons (1849) and 
My Novel (1853), — two works dealing with modern 
life in a semi-realistic fashion. It is, however, as a 
romanticist that Bulwer holds his place in literature, 
a position reinforced by the great success of his two 
romantic dramas, TTie Lady of Lyons and Richelieu 
(1838). In a third group of novels — Zanoni (1842), 
The Haunted and the Haunters (1859), and A Strange 
Story (1862) — the romanticism is of the older gothic 
type, depending upon the supernatural and occult to 
supply the exciting interest. 

The novels of political and fashionable life, written 
by Lord Beaconsfield between the years 1826 
Disraeli, and 1880, were romantic rather than realistic 
1804-81. efforts, brilliant but superficial ; they have 
never held a very high place among the serious crea- 
tions of imaginative literature. The appearance of 
Vivian Grey^ the first, in 1826, created something of 
a sensation among readers, but its artificial character 
was soon recognized. When Lothair was published 
in 1870, an anonymous reviewer in Blackwood^ evi- 
dently a political friend of the novelist, remarked that 
" on the whole, we had rather Mr. Gladstone had writ- 
ten it " — Mr. Gladstone being at the time the vigorous 
antagonist of the party represented by Disraeli and his 
friends. 

For the rest, idealism and realism mingle in the 
TheReaiis- ^^^adening current of later English fiction, 
tic Move- Now and again the realist has yielded to the 
fascination of some romantic motive drawn 
from historical sources, or to the charm of a period 
filled with intense dramatic interest ; and thus we get 
A Tale of Two Cities or The Cloister and the 
Hearth^ a Henry Esmond^ an Hypatia, or a Romola. 



CHARLES DICKENS 



417 



But the conspicuous tendency of the English novel, 
almost to the close of the century, has been in the direc- 
tion of a realistic portrayal of our common life. The 
great novelists who represent the best achievements in 
fiction during the Victorian age are essentially realists 
in purpose and method. Nineteenth century realism 
is an advance upon that of the eighteenth century. 
Not only has the field of observation been wonderfully 
extended, but mere observation has gradually given 
place to a close, almost scientific study of conditions and 
types ; the art of delineation has, on the whole, im- 
proved ; an honest sympathy has displaced much shal- 
low sentiment ; and as a result of it all we have arrived 
at a clearer and more truthful account of society and 
human character, a more profound and accurate report 
of life, than the earlier novelists were able to give. 

First of the great modern novelists to find inspira- 
tion in the material of everyday affairs was qy^^j-i^^ 
Charles Dickens, the story of whose progress Dickens, 
toward fame is as sensational as that which 
supplies the plot of any of his famous novels. Indeed 
many of the details of that life, so wretched and so 
lonely in its beginnings, may be detected only half-dis- 
guised by the imagination of the story-teller in the 
chapters of Little Dorrit, Oopperfield, Nichlehy^ and 
Oliver Twist. 

Charles Dickens was born in a suburb of Ports- 
mouth in Hampshire, where his father, John ^j^gg^^^g 
Dickens, was a clerk attached to the service gie to Suc- 
of the navy yard ; but two years after the 
birth of Charles the family made one or two removes, 
and were living in extremely poor circumstances in a 
miserable quarter of London when the boy was about 
ten years old. Headers of David Coi^])eT field ^ will 
1 Ch. xi. 



418 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



recall brief glimpses of the harsh experiences that fell 
in the childhood of the hero ; the wretched life in the 
London streets, the dismal days of toil in the ware- 
house, the hunger, the depression, the misery of the * 
sensitive, delicate lad. 

" When I had money enough, I used to get half-a-pint of 
ready made coffee and a slice of bread and butter. When 
I had none, I used to look at a venison-shop in Fleet-street ; 
or I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden 
Market, and stared at the pine-apples. ... I know that I 
worked, from morning until night, with common men and 
boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the streets, 
insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for 
the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care 
that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond." 

The novelist has in these lines by no means exagger- 
ated his own unhappy lot. The humorous account of 
Mr. Micawber's financial troubles is based upon the 
actual and more serious circumstances of his own fam- 
ily affairs. When Charles was ten, a succession of 
misfortunes culminated in his father's imprisonment 
for debt, and at that helpless age the boy, entirely 
dependent upon his own resources, was thrown a waif 
upon the world. Through long monotonous days he 
toiled in the cellar of a blacking factory on the river- 
side, washing the empty bottles and pasting labels on 
the filled ones, trudging home at night, four miles, to a 
lonely room, — a lodging destined to a degree of fame 
somewhat later as the abiding-place of the irrepressi- 
ble Bob Sawyer, — and spending his Sundays with his 
parents inside the damp walls of old Marshalsea prison. 
After his father's release things went a little better. 
Charles was placed in a private school for three or four 
years, where he read all the novels on which he could 
lay his hands, and whence he emerged in time to become 



THE NOVELS 



419 



a shorthand reporter at seventeen ; but it was not until 
he was twenty-two that he obtained a permanent posi- 
tion on the staff of a London newspaper. And now 
comes the story of the first literary success, a story 
which brings us nearer to the personality of Dickens, 
perhaps, than that of any other recorded incident in 
his career. With all the hopes and all the misgivings 
of a beginner just making his first timid venture upon 
the sea of literary effort, the young reporter one day, 
shyly and by stealth, drops his first original manuscript 
into the letter-box of a publisher. Upon the day of 
issue this new contributor buys a copy of the magazine 
upon the street. He scarcely dares to open the cover. 
So nervous is he that it is a little while before he suc- 
ceeds in finding the table of contents ; but when at last he 
discovers therein the title of a certain sketch by " Boz," 
the sensitive, emotional spirit of the man is not to be 
restrained ; ashamed to meet the curious eyes of the 
crowds who fill the busy Strand, Dickens plunges into 
the nearest doorway to sob out for a moment the emo- 
tion too acute to be concealed. Perhaps it was this 
quick sensibility in the novelist that brought him now 
and then so dangerously near the verge of sentiment 
of a less wholesome type ; and this quality it is, per- 
haps, which accounts in part for the fact that no one 
of the great novelists arouses so strong partisanship as 
the creator of Dombey, David Copperfield, and Little 
Nell. 

In 1836 there appeared the first of a series of hu- 
morous sketches depicting- the adventures and 

. T . ^ r 1 TheNovels. 

misadventures or a party or Cockney sports- 
men. The illustrations were supplied by Seymour, a 
popular comic draughtsman ; the chapters were written 
by " Boz." ^ The result of the plan was the inimit- 

1 This pen-name, used by Dickens at the beginniDg of his career, 



420 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



able volume of Pickwick Papers^ completed in 1837. 
Then Dickens set seriously at work. The first real novel 
was Oliver Twist (1838), a Defoe-like study of low, 
criminal types. Nicholas Nicklehy followed in 1839, 
in which the material was drawn from middle-class life. 
With almost unparalleled fertility of creative power, 
The Old Curiosity Shop and Bariiahy Pudge were 
completed in 1841, Martin Chuzzlewit in 1843. The 
Christmas Tales appeared in 1843, '46, and '48. Dom- 
hey and Son was finished in 1848, David Copperjield in 
1850. Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), and 
Little Dorrit (1857) followed. A Tale of Two Cities 
came in 1859, The Uncommercial Traveller and Great 
Expectations in 1861, Our Mutual Friend in 1865, 
and the last novel. The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was 
left Tinfinished by the author's death. Besides this list 
of novels, Dickens's works comprise many sketches, the 
American JVotes, the Pictures from Italy, and The 
Child's History of England. At various times he was 
the editor of several periodicals, including a popular 
magazine. All the Year Round. He traveled consid- 
erably and gave many public readings in Great Brit- 
ain and America. Throughout his life he took a deep 
interest in the stage ; had had ambitions to be an actor, 
and at different times participated in both private and 
public performances with great enthusiasm and an 
almost professional success. His popularity as a nov- 
elist was immense ; and at the height of his success 
he died suddenly, falling from his chair while still at 
work, worn out by the strain. 

Walter Besant has called Dickens " the prophet of 
the middle class." It was with the experiences of this 

■was his little sister's corruption of the name Moses, which Dickens had 
playfully applied to his young-er brother ; it was originally borrowed 
from The Vicar of Wakefield. 



THE PHILANTHJIOPIC PURPOSE 421 

class that his pages are stored ; it was the middle class 
of society in the great metropolis of London character- 
that he knew, although it was not always 
the London of his own era that he described. Within 
the world of London life what a multitude of types he 
saw — what humor, what pathos, what tragedy ! There 
is exaggeration everywhere in his portraitures, in his 
sentiment, in his humor, in his facts ; but this exaggera- 
tion is a legitimate feature of Dickens's method, a sort 
of natural hyperbole which does not spoil the reality 
of his creations : it is the natural exaggeration of the 
artist who throws the features of his subject into high 
relief. His eye was quick to see that one peculiar trait 
in mental or moral make-up which stamps a man a 
"character." This oddity of temperament was as obvi- 
ous and insistent as any eccentricity of motion or acci- 
dent of physique which excites our pity, our laughter, 
or disgust. The painter of Uriah Heep, of Smike, of 
Squeers, of Pickwick, and of Quilp shaded heavily and 
made a daring use of color ; but Dickens's characters 
are something more than mere caricatures of men and 
women — they bear all the marks of life. 

We think inevitably of Charles Dickens as the 
great representative humorist in English fic- .pj^^pj^^^ 
tion. The Pickwick Papers excited the anthropic 
laughter of the world ; the spirit of comedy, ^^^p^^®- 
if not of farce, runs side by side with that of a deeper 
sentiment in almost all his works. But a humanita- 
rian motive is as clearly evident in all his important 
novels. The misfortunes of the poor, the sufferings of 
the oppressed, affected his sympathies profoundly. His 
sensibility was touched, his passion aroused, by any 
tale of abuse. He was the first of novelists to depict 
the sorrows of friendless childhood ; he loved to create 
child characters like the little cripple, Tiny Tim, Pip 



422 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



in Great Expectations^ Paul Dombey, and Little Nell. 
No writer has surpassed him in the pathos with which 
he describes the death of children. Abuses of author- 
ity in prisons, in workhouses, the injustice of the law's 
delays, cruelty inflicted upon children in a private 
school — these, once suggested, kindled his imagina- 
tion into flame ; indignation has rarely expressed itself 
more hotly than that which speaks in the satire of 
Nicholas Nichlehy^ Bleah House^ and Oliver Twist, 

It was all real to the novelist. He shouted with 
laughter, or burst into tears as his characters ran their 
predestined course over the sheets of manuscript be- 
neath his pen. And the world of readers wept and 
laughed with him when the books were in their hands. 
In the present generation something of the sentiment 
has lost its force ; but the position of Dickens as a 
prince among story-tellers is still secure. 

In 1848, the year in which Charles Dickens, already 
William famous, completed his sixth successful novel, 
ThackeTay Dombey and Son, another writer, compara- 
1811-63. tively unknown, won his way to fame as the 
author of a serial just finished, — Vanity Fair. Thack- 
eray was born at Calcutta, where his father was em- 
ployed in the civil service of the East India Company. 
Five years after his son's birth Richmond Thackeray 
died, and shortly after the boy was sent to England 
to be educated. At ten he was placed in the Char- 
terhouse School, and afterward went to Cambridge. 
Thackeray remained but two years at the University, 
and then began the study of law. This profession 
he found distasteful ; he had a unique talent for 
drawing and was ambitious to become an artist. Aban- 
doning his law books, he finally determined to go 
abroad, and spent some months traveling over Europe 
studying art in Paris and Rome. When a change 



VAJSTITY FAIR 423 

occurred in the family fortunes, compelling liim to 
begin work in earnest, Thackeray, like Dickens, be- 
came a journalist, and soon found the path which led 
to his brilliant literary career. 

Thackeray found a ready reception for all the sketches 
that he could write. He became a regular unimpor- 
contributor to several magazines, and under tant works, 
the name of ^liehael Angelo Titmarsh he published 
in Fraser'fi his burlesque of The Great Hoggarty 
Diamond, and the narrative of Barry Lyndon — the 
latter a satirical novel like Fielding's JonatTian Wild. 
and taking for its hero an eighteenth century adven- 
turer of the picare-que type. The YeUoivplusJi Pa- 
pers, Thie Paris Shetch BooJc, and The Irish Sketeh 
Boole also belong to this early group. In 1842 Thack- 
eray joined the staff of Punchy to which he contributed 
Jeames Diary and The Booh of Snohs. His chosen 
field was satire, and his first great novel, Vanity Fair^ 
revealed his power as that of a master in the art. 

It was not the world of which Dickens wrote that 
we find described in Thackeray's fictions. In vanity 
many ways the work of the latter novelist 
represents a revolt from the methods and the matter 
of his immediate predecessors, and even from his con- 
temporary, Dickens. Thackeray did not believe in 
heroes and heroines, nor did he take much interest in 
efforts for reform. His o-reat model was Tieldino- 
and there was no idealization of the types he selected 
for portrayal. Through his benignant-looking spectacles 
his sharp eyes peered through the shams and follies of 
the real society in which he moved. Bhmtly enough he 
told the story of Vanity Pair, drawing his pictures 
of the adventuresses and the roo'ues who throno" its 
lanes and crowd its booths. Like his master. Field- 
ing, also, he frequently appears beside the stage of his 



424 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



little theatre to moralize upon the conduct of the 
puppets who perform for our amusement upon the 
scene. There is a strong element of cynicism in Thack- 
eray's interpretation of the life portrayed. The dash 
and cunning of Becky Sharp compel the admiration 
that the respectable but foolish Amelia cannot com- 
mand. The coarse brutishness of the sensual Lord 
Steyne, the superficial polish of young George Os- 
borne, selfish and faithless, the hopeless stupidity of 
Eawdon Crawley, the gluttony and cowardice of Jos. 
Sedley — these portraitures, true enough to the types, 
are but poorly balanced by the placid, good-natured, 
honest dullness of Dobbin in this picture of London 
society in the era of Wellington and Waterloo. 

Vanity Fair was followed by Pendennis in 1848- 
The other — ^ novel conceived in the realistic spirit 
Great and frankly modeled upon Tom Jones. In 
Novels. 1352 appeared Thackeray's most remarkable 
work, Henry Esmond — rather an historical romance 
than a realistic novel, and one of the great achieve- 
ments of English fiction. In pleasant contrast to the 
methods of Vanity Fair., we are shown the ever at- 
tractive qualities of manly honor and womanly virtue, 
mutual affection, devotion, and loyalty — characteristic 
of the heroes and heroines we cannot but love. A 
peculiar feature of the book is its wonderful recon- 
struction of eighteenth century life in the very letter 
as well as the spirit of its age. The style of autobio- 
graphic narrative, the form in which the work is cast, 
was a severe test of its author's power ; certainly no 
other novelist has achieved so great a success. Thack- 
eray's fourth novel. The Newcomes., was written in 
1853-55. Its tone is genial, as in Esmond ; and the 
character of Colonel Newcome, a true-hearted English 
gentleman, is one of the most impressive portraitures 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE ; ELIZABETH GASKELL 425 



in our literature. The Virginians appeared in 1857-58 
as a sequel to Henrij Esmond. 

In 1852 Thackeray had visited America, enjoying 
the hospitality of our own distinguished men -^^^^ 
of letters, lecturing- upon The* English Hit- Labors. 
mourists. Again in 1855 he came — this time deliver- 
ing his lectures upon The Four Georges, He became 
editor of The Cornhill Magazine in January, 1860, and 
contributed his last minor novels to that periodical. 
As he grew older he became despondent. His health 
failed, and before his friends were aware of his serious 
condition, upon Christmas eve, and alone, he too, like 
his fellow novelist and friend, died, weary with his 
work. 

The mingling of romance and realism was exhibited 
in the singularly dramatic novel, Jane Eyre., charlotte 
w^hich appeared in 1848, while Vanity Fair Bronte, 
was still running through its monthly parts. EUzabefh 
This book produced a distinct sensation. Gaskeii, 
Published under the pen-name of Currer 
Bell, a spirited discussion arose as to its authorship, 
when it was discovered to be the work of Charlotte 
Bronte, a minister's daughter in Yorkshire, one of 
three talented sisters, each of whom had tried her hand 
at novel-making, not without success. She wrote two 
other novels, 8hirley (1849) and Villette (1853), but 
these fell short of her first success. In Cranford 
(1853) another woman, Mrs. Gaskell, produced a 
purely realistic study of the eccentricities and quiet 
humors of country life. She was also the author of 
other tales, some dealing w^ith the problems of the 
employer and the employed, others with the study of 
evil and its effects. These stories had a decided influ- 
ence upon the early work of George Eliot, and are 
among the first belonging to that type of fiction which 



426 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



analyzes motives and dissects character — the so-called 
psychological novel. 

With the publication of Adam Bede in 1859, George 
Qgojgg Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) took her place at 
Eliot, the head of English novelists in the realistic 

1819-80. 

school. She was born upon a farm in War- 
wickshire. Her early life was uneventful, but in her 
twenty-second year she passed through an important 
religious experience, and under the influence of the 
new speculations in science and continental skepticism, 
she abandoned her former evangelical faith. She then 
became identified with a group of free-thinkers, among 
whom John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and George 
Henry Lewes were prominent leaders. This radical 
change in her religious views was momentous in its 
effect upon her subsequent life. 

It was not until her thirty-eighth year that Miss 

„ „ Evans discovered her power as a writer of 
Her Novels. . _ -lorrr i r. 

stones, in January, looT, the first part of 

Scenes of Clerical Life appeared in Blackwood^ 8^ and 
an immediate interest was aroused in the work of this 
promising new author. The three Scenes thus intro- 
duced comprised The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend 
Amos Barton^ Mr. GilfiVs Love- Story ^ and Janet's 
Hepentance. They were psychological and realistic. 
Adam Bede (1859) met with a still greater success. 
The sad story of the erring Hetty and the fatal conse- 
quences of her fault was told with quiet power ; the 
characters of Adam Bede and Dinah Morris were im- 
pressively real. Indeed much of the material of this 
novel was taken straight from nature. An aunt of 
the author was the original of this devoted woman 
preacher, and had really stood by the side of a poor 
girl condemned to death for the murder of her child. 
Many of the traits of George Eliot's own father are 



HER NOVELS 



427 



reproduced in Adam Bede, and Mrs. Poyser, shrewd, 
sarcastic, hard-working, bears no small resemblance to 
Mrs. Evans, a serious, earnest-minded woman, a care- 
ful housekeeper, and possessed of a shrewish tongue. 

In TTiQ Mill on the Floss (1860) there are many 
reminiscences of the Warwickshire home. Mao-onie 
Tulliver with her shaggy mane of incorrigible black 
hair, her passionate love for books, and her hunger for 
affection, is a picture of Mary Ann Evans in her girl- 
hood. The relations between Maggie and her brother 
Tom are very similar to those existing between the 
real girl and her older brother, Isaac Evans. The 
humorous accounts of life as it runs among the TuUi- 
vers, the Gleggs, and the Pullets had their inspiration 
in well-remembered oddities of countryside society. 
George Eliot's most convincing characters were based 
upon actual observation. 

Silas Marner^ a model of compact art, was pub- 
lished in 1861, Romola in 1863. In this last great 
novel, with its impressive historical background of Flor- 
entine life in the age of Savonarola, we have a stern and 
powerful study of moral decay in the character of Tito 
Melema, which becomes the motive of chief dramatic 
interest, rather than the vivid picture of fifteenth cen- 
tury Florence in the acme of its pride. In Felix Holt 
(1866) the novelist returned to the conditions and 
problems of the present. Middlemarch^ one of her 
strongest works, dealing with the moral failures of 
many lives, appeared as a serial in 1872. Her last im- 
portant work, which fell considerably below her former 
efforts, however, in convincing force, was Daniel De- 
ronda (1876). 

George Eliot applied philosophy to the study of life 
as no previous novelist had done. Her characters were 
taken in the main from the common, the universal 



428 FROM WOEDSWpRTH TO TENNYSON 



brotherhood of ordinary people, without exaggeration, 
ThePhiio- ^1*^°^* distortion; they really seemed to 
sopMcai have grown, like mortals. These characters 
Element. interpreted^ as neither Scott nor Dick- 

ens nor Thackeray had attempted to do, analyzing their 
motives of action and relentlessly depicting the effect 
of every important act. She gave a moral weight to 
the literature of fiction which added materially to its 
worth. There is a heaviness of melancholy vaguely 
perceptible in the minor tones of all her works ; to one 
familiar with the story of her own life experience this 
seriousness of tone is comprehensible. The stress of 
her own spiritual struggles, and the inevitable trials of 
her chosen situation, added, beyond a doubt, to the in- 
telligence of her conceptions and the intensity of her 
feeling, while the intuitive optimism of her nature 
bade her proclaim the gospel of a triumphant perse- 
verance rather than the hard doctrine of despair. Re- 
garded as subjective embodiments of wholesome ideas, 
and considered technically as objective pictures of life 
and manners, wherein both humor and pathos mingle 
naturally — the human comedy and the human tragedy 
of actual existence — George Eliot's novels surpass all 
others in true realism ; with that distinction they may 
justly claim the place of honor in English fiction. 

The story of the English novel in the nineteenth cen- 
Anthony ^^^^ means finished. Each of the 

Troiiope, great novelists has had his following among 
1815-82. ^j^^ lesser story-writers. The influence of 
Thackeray is seen in the work of Anthony Troiiope, 
author of a long series of novels depicting the lives and 
fortunes of typical characters in various professions 
and callings. His first successful production was The 
Warden (1855) ; a continuation followed in Barches- 
ter Towers (1857). These two novels, together with 



CHARLES KINGSLEY 



429 



Framley Parsonage (1861), Orley Farm, The Small 
House at AUington, Can you Forgive her, and The 
Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), are his best repre- 
sentative works. 

Many of the characteristics of Dickens are found in 
the novels of Reade. He shared the greater q^lzxIq^ 
novelist's enthusiasm for the stage, and was Reade, 
the author of many plays. His first serious 
effort in fiction, Peg Woffington (1852), has for its 
heroine a noted eighteenth century actress, celebrated 
for her vivacity and beauty as well as for her art. 
Charles Reade was the author of eighteen novels, sev- 
eral of them purpose stories aimed to arouse sentiment 
against various social wrongs. Of these. It is Never 
too Late to Mend (1856), Hard Cash (1863), and 
Put Yourself in his Place (1870) are best known. 
His one historical romance, dealing with the early 
stage of the Reformation period in Germany, The 
Cloister and the Hearth, belongs with the masterpieces 
of its class. 

Charles Kingsley, an English clergyman, published 
in 1849 two earnest books which exerted a charies 
marked influence upon the thought of the Kingsley, 

. . 1819-75. 

time. These were Alton Loche, descriptive 
of life in the London workshops, and Yeast, a study 
of conditions amons,' the ao;ricultural laborers. In 
1853 appeared Hypatia, a fascinating narrative of 
the conflict between Christianity and Greek philoso- 
phy at Alexandria, about the beginning of the fifth 
century. His purely historical romances, JVestiuard 
Ho! (1855) and Hereioard the Wake (1866), are 
vigorous and brilliant pictures of English life in the 
age of Elizabeth and the period of the Norman Con- 
quest. In 1860 Kingsley had been made Professor 
of Modern History at the University of Cambridge. 



430 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



In 1873 he was appointed Canon of Westminster and 
Chaplain to the Queen. 

The influence of the realistic school is still seen in 
The New work of scores of living writers who have 

Romantic followed more or less closely the methods of 
Movement. ^Yie'iY predecessors. But at the very close of 
the century we note a vigorous reaction from the meth- 
ods of realistic fiction and a return to romance, — a 
movement both interesting and instructive. It is the 
natural recoil from one extreme to the other. The 
old order changes and is replaced by the new. In this 
later romantic revival, Robert Louis Stevenson (1845- 
94) has been the strongest representative. Treasure 
Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886), The Master of 
Ballantrae (1889), and Damd Balfour (1893) are all 
to be classed as narratives of pure adventure. It is a 
return to the romance of Scott. In a last, uncom- 
pleted novel. Weir of Hermiston^ Stevenson left a work 
which should have been the promise of as great charac- 
ter creation as has ever been seen in English fiction. 

The methods of this later romanticism have gained 
not a little from the experiments of the realistic school. 
The extravagant absurdities of the old romanticists are 
not likely to return. On the other hand, the realists 
have also something to learn from the methods of ro- 
mance ; there is room for idealism in all study of life. 
Moreover, there is an inevitable law which links beauty 
with truth in all artistic expression. When the nov- 
elist becomes vulgar or trivial under the plea of fidelity 
to fact, he degrades literature and falls short of the 
ideal. There will follow an infallible readjustment of 
methods which will introduce a fashion more true to 
reality and more in accord with the principles and 
philosophy of art. 



THE LITEEAEY FIELD 



431 



TII. THE YICTOEIAX POETS : BEOWOTIsG, TENNYSON. 

^ When Victoria came to the throne of England in 
1837, the second generation of nineteeth cen- j^j^gj_ 
tury writers was in full possession of the ary Field, 
stage ; the majority of those who had won their laurels 
during the early years of the century had passed away, 
and only a few of those who were destined to make its 
closing years memorable in literary history had as yet 
found a place upon the scene. Byron, Scott, Shelley, 
Keats, Coleridge, Lamb — all were dead. Words- 
worth still survived, the period of his inspiration gone ; 
in 1837 he made the tour of Italy, of which he wrote 
Memorials after his return. Thomas De Quincey, in 
his fifty-second year, was living his eccentric life in 
Edinburgh : he published The Mevolt of the Tartars in 
183T. It was the year in which ^lacaulay, then in In- 
dia, sent his essay on Bacon to the Uclinhurgh Heview, 
and also the year in which Carlyle finished his great 
work upon The French Sexoliition and began his first 
course of public lectures in London. Bulwer was en- 
joying the fame brought by the publication of The 
Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and Rienzi (1835). 
Dickens finished Piclcioich Papers in 1837 and began 
Oliver Twist in that same year. Thackeray was in- 
dustriously cultivating journalism, writing for The 
Times^ contributing The Yelloicplush Papers to 
Praser's Magazine, and supplying comic sketches for 
Cruikshank's Almanach. It was John Ruskin's first 
year of University residence ; he was making himself 
a master of the pencil, and writing articles upon The 
Poetry of Architecture for technical magazines. Mary 
Ann Evans, just out of school, was keeping house on 
her father's farm, widening her acquaintance with 
books, and strongly evangelical in her religious be- 



432 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



liefs. In 1837 Mattliew Arnold, fifteen years of age, 
entered Rugby Scliool. Of the new poets, Browning 
had published Paracelsus in 1835 ; Tennyson had al- 
ready sent forth his second volume (1832), including 
The Miller's Daughter^ The Lotos-Eaters^ The Pal- 
ace of Art, and The Lady of Shalott — he was now 
quietly perfecting his art and preparing for his next 
public appearance in 1842 ; William Morris was three 
years old ; and 1837 was the year of Swinburne's 
birth. 

The literature of the Victorian age compares favor- 
ably with that of any other epoch in English history. 
Essayists, historians, scientists, novelists, and poets 
have together contributed to the glory of its record. 
In the drama alone has creative genius been conspicu- 
ously weak ; but here the deficiency has, perhaps, been 
more than met by the remarkable development in Eng- 
lish fiction. The work of the great prose writers of 
this era has been covered in our survey ; it remains 
only to speak of the great Victorian poets, at whose 
head stand Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. 

Robert Browning was born in London May 7, 1812. 
Robert "^^^ father, a clerk in the Bank of England 
Browning, for fifty years, was a man of taste in letters 
1812-89. ^^^^ fostered this taste in his son. 

The poet's mother, a woman of deeply religious nature, 
was also a person of artistic temperament and fond of 
poetry. She was a romanticist ; the father a disciple 
of Pope. 

From the first Robert Browning was keenly suscep- 
tible to the influence of music, and a reminis- 
cence of the poet's childhood presents him to 
us a little white-robed figure indistinctly outlined in 
the dusk, stealing from his bed to listen to his mother 
who was" playing in the twilight; startled by the rus- 



THE DEFINITE PLAN 



433 



tling behind her she stopped, and the next moment the 
child leaped into her arms, sobbing passionately and 
whispering, " Play ! Play ! " ^ At eight, under his fa- 
ther's direction, he read Pope's Homer with delight ; 
but he soon yielded to the fascination of Byron's ro- 
mantic verse, and when his mother brought him copies 
of Shelley and Keats, he entered a new world of song ; 
then his true poetic development began. 

Browning's education was gained in a private school 
and at the University College, London, then just es- 
tablished. He entered in 1829, the year in which the 
college opened ; but here he remained only for a term 
or two. He had, like other poets, courted the muse in 
much youthful verse ; and while a schoolboy at Peck- 
ham, was fond of dreaming away the summer afternoons 
in an unfrequented spot by three huge elms, whence he 
had a view of London — the sight of which powerfully 
stirred his imagination. Once he found his way to the 
place at night, and the ruddy glare of the city lamps, 
glowing above the blackness, with the audible murmur 
of its distant streets, aroused in his mind first ideas of 
the tragic significance of life. We know little else 
of his school days. He was studious, contemplative, 
and retired. 

When Browning was about twenty years old, he 
planned a series of epic narratives which TheDefi- 
should depict the development of typical ^^^ePian. 
souls. He set himself to the study of the soul life. 
This determination gives us the key to his career ; the 
internal drama of the mind is the theme of his verse ; 
it is this which distinguishes him among poets as the 

" Subtlest assertor of the soul in song." ^ 

1 See Sharpe's liife of Robert Browning, ch. i. 

2 The title g'iven Browning- by his friend Alfred Domett, the hero 
of the poem Waring. 



434 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



In pursuance of his plan Browning completed, in 1832, 
his first important poem, Pauline^ which was published 
through the generosity of an aunt the following year. 
The poem is a confession of a youth — a poet and a 
student — whose life, in spite of dreams of usefulness, 
has been misspent. Pauline is the name of the lady 
who edits it. 

'* So I will sing" on — fast as fancies come, 
Rudely — the verse being as the mood it paints. 

I am made up of an intensest life. 

I strip my mind bare, whose first elements 

I shall unveil. . . . 

And then I shall show how these elements 
Produced my present state, and what it is." 

The poem was crude, obscure, and scarcely understood ; 
but both its matter and its manner were significant of 
the poet's programme, and this programme he followed 
to the last. 

In 1833 Browning traveled in Europe, visiting 
Eussia and Italy. Durino^ 1834-35 he com- 
and Sor- posed the long dramatic poem Paracelsus. 

It was a wonderful production for a youth of 
twenty-two. 

" I go to prove my soul ! " the hero cries ; 

" I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive ! what time, what circuit first, 
I ask not : but unless God send His hail 
Or blinding- fire-balls, sleet or stifling- snow, 
In some time. His g-ood time, I shall arrive ; 
He guides me and the bird. In His good time." 

The general theme of the poem may, perhaps, be sug- 
gested by the headings of its sections : Paracelsus 
aspires ; Paracelsus attains ; Paracelsus ; Paracelsus 
aspires ; Paracelsus attains. There are many imper- 
fections in the poem and many beauties. It won the 
poet some notable friends. 



THE SECOND PERIOD 



435 



Browning was already at work upon another poem, 
but set that work aside at the request of the celebrated 
actor, Macready, for a play. In May, 1837, the drama 
of Strafford was completed and presented at the Covent 
Garden Theatre. It proved only a partial success. The 
great philosophical poem Sordello^ thus interrupted, 
was not finished until 1840. It was another " soul " 
poem, the author's most ambitious effort. It was much 
longer than Paracelsus^ more profound, and, alas, 
much more obscure. Several amusing anecdotes are 
told of those who attempted in vain to understand it. 
Carlyle declared that his wife had read the poem 
through without being able to decide whether Bordello 
was a man, a city, or a book. Tennyson affirmed 
that only two lines did he understand — and they were 
both lies : these were the opening, — 

" Who will may hear Sordello's story told, — 

and the closing, — 

" Who would has heard Sordello's story told." 

Between the years 1840 and 1870 Browning pro- 
duced his best work. He had then emerged The Second 
from the heaviness and abstruseness of the Period, 
first period and wrote with a freshness and vigor of 
style that gave intense dramatic interest to the expres- 
sion of profoundest thought. In 1841 was published 
Pippa Passes, a genuine masterpiece of creative power. 
The story of the poem is an episode in the life of 
Felippa, or Pippa, a little silk-winder from the factory 
in Asolo, an Italian town in the Trevisan. Upon her 
birthday, which is New Year's Day, Pippa spends her 
unwonted leisure wishinsr she mioht do some small ser- 
vice in the world. She allows her childish imagination 
to participate in the happiness of certain prominent 
personages who are in the town — the happiest of all 



436 FROM WOEDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



in Asolo : Ottima, illicitly beloved by Sebald ; Luigi, 
the idol of his mother ; Phene, that day to become 
the bride of the young artist Jules ; and Monsignor, 
who is to arrive from Rome, whose happiness must be 
the greatest of all, because his is a spiritual affection, 
the sacred passion of the Holy Church. Thus Pippa 
passes through the city, singing her blithe song : — 

" God 's in his heaven — 
All 's right with the world ! " 

until, unconsciously, she becomes a saving element in 
the soul struggle of each of these great people and the 
instrument of consequences momentous to herself. 

Pippa Passes was published as the first of a series of 
volumes, eight in all, which appeared at intervals from 
1841 to 1846, under the general title Bells and Pome- 
granates. The series included the Pramo:tie Lyrics 
(1842), the Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845), 
and five of Browning's poetical dramas, of which A 
Blot in the ^Scutcheon (1843) and Colombe's Birth- 
day (1844), are the best known. 

In 1846 the poet was married to Elizabeth Barrett. 
Eiizai)eth This gifted woman had already published two 
Barrett. three volumes of song which had won ready 

recognition by their worth. She was an invalid for 
many years, and at the time when her acquaintance 
with Robert Browning began had, apparently, not long 
to live. Her father, a man of obstinate and violent 
temper, opposed the friendship strenuously ; but four 
months after their first meeting, the two poets were 
quietly married and slipped away to Italy, where they 
continued to reside until Mrs. Browning's death in 
1861. The married life of the Brownings was ideally 
happy. Each was an inspiration to the other ; and in 
the new environment of love and happiness, health 
and life came back to the invalid. 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 



437 



" I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchang-e 
My near sweet view of heaven for earth with thee," 

she wrote in one of her Sonnets from the Portuguese^ 
— love poems written in their home at Pisa and, under 
the disguise of a purely fanciful title, dedicated to her 
husband. They afterward removed to Florence, where 
Mrs. Browning wrote Casa Guidi Windows and Au- 
rora Leigh. In 1849 their son, Robert, was born ; 
and in the same year Browning's Poetical Works were 
published in two volumes. In 1853-54 the Brownings 
passed the winter in Rome. Here were written the 
poems published in the following year under the title 
Men and Women, including Pra Lippo Lippi, The 
Epistle of Karshish, and the completed version of Saul. 
The volume was dedicated in a beautiful introductory 
lyric, One Word More., to the poet's wife. In the 
spring of the next year Mrs. Browning presented her 
husband with the first six books of Aurora Leigh. 

During the five years following Mrs. Browning's 
death in 1861, Robert Browning wrote comparatively 
little ; yet to this period belong some of the most not- 
able among his shorter poems : James Lees Wife., Abt 
Vogler, A Death hi the Desert, Rahhi Ben Ezra, 
and Prospice. In 1868-69 appeared the poet's real 
masterpiece. The Ping and the Booh. This ^.j^gjj^j^g 
extraordinary work, consisting of some 20,000 and the 
lines, longer than the Piad and twice as long 
as Paradise Lost, contains the dramatic recital of a 
brutal crime, — Count Guido Franceschini's murder of 
his wife. Out of this unpromising material Browning 
has constructed a fascinating and impressive study in 
character ; it is a drama of the consequences of an act, 
and its effect on the soul. The story of the crime is 
told by nine different persons, including the murderer, 
his victim (who makes an ante-mortem statement), a 



438 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



young priest (who has been the friend of the wife), 
the public prosecutor, the advocate, and the pope (to 
whom appeal is made). The significance of the title 
is explained by its symbolism. A goldsmith in mak- 
ing a ring mixes alloy with the pure metal, so that the 
gold can be modeled by art ; when the ring is made, 
the alloy is removed by acid. The book referred to 
is the yellow-colored text of evidence submitted in the 
trial of Count Guido at Rome in 1698. It contains 
the truth of circumstantial fact. Now the poet will 
take his material thus discovered, mix fancy with the 
fact, and beat out in his own way the finer truth which 
his artist's eye discerns — 

" Because it is the glory and the good of Art, 
That Art remains the one way possible 
Of speaking truth." 

Full with the vivacity and cheeriness of a vigorous 
Later Life P^jsique, Browning passed the later years of 
his life partly in Venice, partly in London ; 
he never returned to Florence after Mrs. Browning's 
death. He was fond of company ; he continued active 
in brain and body to the end. Of the fourteen vol- 
umes of verse published between 1870 and 1890, it is 
not necessary to speak in detail. His best poetry be- 
longs to the middle period of his life. Always philo- 
sophical, his philosophy became more abstruse, his 
expression more eccentric in the later works. But the 
magnificent virility of his style, and the triumphant 
optimism of his healthy soul, characterized his poetry 
to the end. He died in Venice December 12, 1889, 
and his body was finally laid in Westminster Abbey. 

Of all the poets, Browning most demands a guide. It has 
Suggestions so long been the custom to magnify the " ob- 
for Study. scurity " of Browning's poetry that much injustice 
has been done both the poet and the possible reader of his 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



439 



work ; at the same time, for one beginning to read Brown- 
ing, some direction is almost essential. The best guide yet 
published is An Introduction to the Study of Robert Broiun- 
ing's Poetry, by Hiram Corson (Heath). Let the student 
read the introductory essays, particularly that upon "Brown- 
ing's Obscurity," and then follow the order of the selected 
poems which Professor Corson includes. When the struc- 
ture of the dramatic monologue is once understood, he will 
have no great difficulty in comprehending the poet. If one 
does not have Professor Corson's Introduction, he would 
best begin with the Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, tak- 
ing the familiar How they Brought the Good News from 
Ghent, Home Thoughts, The Boy and the Angel, The Glove, 
The Lost Leader ; then The Flight of the Duchess, The 
Italian in England, and The Englishman in Italy. Then 
let him take the volume of Men and Women and read the 
two great " artist " poems, Era Lippo Lijppi and Andrea del 
Sarto. These are both monologues, the principal person in 
each poem speaking throughout, but indicating by his expres- 
sion the presence of one or more auditors who reaUy enter into 
the conversation and action of the piece. The first is a study 
of one of the early realists among the Italian painters, — the 
Carmelite monk, shut up by his patron, Cosimo de' Medici, 
and breaking out of bounds for an evening's amusement on 
the streets. He has been picked up by the watch and speaks, 
as a captive, to the officer in command. He tells the story 
of his rather sorry life and discourses significantly upon his 
art. The pith of the poem is in lines 283-315. The doc- 
trine expressed in 

" This world 's no blot for us, 
Nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good," 

is one often reiterated by the poet. Andrea del Sarto, one of 
the most delicate characterizations produced by Browning, 
is in a sense antithetical to the other poem. It is a quiet, 
sombre, " twilight " piece. Andrea, " the faultless painter," 
has reached the full measure of his attainment and recog- 
nizes his failure to reach the highest promise of his art ; 



440 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



he never will equal Angelo or Raphael, because his soul has 
ceased to grow ; his weak moral purpose, his infatuation with 
the faithless, soul-less Lucrezia, have robbed him of the con- 
summation that might have crowned his effort ; and he is 
willing that things should be as they are. He also inter- 
prets his own career : — 

" Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what 's a heaven for ? " 

In both these poems Browning exhibits a distinct acquaint- 
ance with the technique of painting, a thorough knowledge 
of the time concerned, as well as profound insight into human 
character. The Bishop Orders his Tomh at Saint Praxed's 
is a study of the worldliness, inconsistency, and pride, com- 
mon enough in the period of the Italian Renascence, re- 
vealed in the character of this hypocritical, luxurious old 
man, whose ruling passions are stiU strong in death. The 
Epistle of Karshish, the Arab Physician is one of the poet's 
masterpieces ; note the delicate touch in details which sug- 
gest the local color and atmosphere. Karshish, in his jour- 
ney, has met a most wonderful case ; the man claims to have 
been recovered from the dead, and his singular behavior, his 
apathy and his enthusiasms, have so wrought upon the mind 
of Karshish that he must needs write his master all about 
it ; he is half ashamed of the impression made upon him, 
and seemingly avoids the real purpose of his letter until it 
bursts forth in a climax of remarkable power. Aside from 
the skill with which the entire theme is developed, the care- 
ful study of the attitude of Lazarus — one called again from 
the dead — is to be noted. Among Browning's distinctively 
religious subjects, the treatment of the theme in Saul is the 
most notable ; poetic inspiration has never produced any- 
thing more impressive than this conception of Hebrew char- 
acter in the shepherd boy David, his relation to the great 
first king, and his outburst of prophetic song. In the study 
of this masterpiece note the various details that give realism 
to the setting as regards scenery and national characteristics ; 
then follow the sequence of events : what is the first effect of 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 



441 



David's singing, and what song produces that effect ? Dis- 
tinguish the themes of all the songs — the effect of each 
upon Saul. Study the nature of the climax in section 18. 
What purpose is served in the conclusion, section 19 ? Com- 
pare with this poem the one entitled A Death in the De- 
sert. Read next some of the poems in Dramatis Personce : 
AM Vogler, the musician's poem, and Rahhi Ben Ezra, the 
embodiment of much of Browning's philosophy concerning 
life. Note the strong optimistic expression in all these poems. 
Bring together some of the clear, forceful statements of that 
philosophy, such as : — 

" The best is yet to be." 

" What I aspired to be 

And vas not, comforts me." 

" Perfect I caU Thy plan : 
Thanks that I was a man ! " 

' ' AU good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul ! " 

' ' There shall never be one lost good ! " 
etc. Find similar sentiments in Said and note them in the 
reading of other poems. Weigh each stanza of Rahhi Ben 
Ezra : what is the direct teaching of stanzas 22, 23, 24 ? 

Haying read the poems named, and others in these vol- 
umes, take up Pippa Passes ; then read one or two sections 
of The Ring and the Book, if interest and appreciation 
grow. This last work should not be made a task ; unless 
its peculiarities of structure and manner are thoroughly en- 
joyed, do not attempt it ; it may be best read, if undertaken 
leisurely, as an entire winter's course. There is a fine edi- 
tion, illustrated from photographs, edited by Charlotte Por- 
ter and Helen A. Clarke (Crowell). Paracelsus and Sor- 
dello should not be read until one finds oneself thoroughly 
in touch with the poet and anxious to extend the acquaint- 
ance ; but any one may safely look for the superb song in 
Paracelsus, "Oyer the sea our galleys went." In all reading 
of Browning, note the strong ybihty of expression, the 



442 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



intensity of thought and passion, the insight into character, 
the hearty sympathy with life, the prominence given to soul 
conflicts, the vigorous dramatic sense, and the truly wonder- 
ful scope and variety shown in the selection of material. 
How many different races are represented among Browning's 
characters ? 

The most convenient short life of Browning is that by 
Brief Bibli- William Sharp, in the Great Writers Series. 
ography. The Browning in the English Men of Letters 
Series is by G. K. Chesterton. There is an extended 
biography by Mrs. Sutherland Orr (Houghton, Mifflin and 
Company), also a Handbook to the Works of Browning y 
by the same author. The Introduction by Hiram Corson 
(Heath) has been already mentioned as indispensable to the 
beginner. There are other introductions, numerous com- 
mentaries, and essays beyond number. Reference to E. C. 
Stedman's Victorian Poets is recommended. The vivacious 
essay by Augustine Birrell in Obiter Dicta, On the Alleged 
Obscurity of Mr. Browning s Poetry, will be found some- 
what reassuring by those who are in difficulty. The Cam- 
bridge Edition of Browning's Complete Poetic and Dra- 
matic Works (Houghton, Mifflin and Company) is the best 
edition for students' use. The same house publishes also 
the Riverside Edition in six volumes. Number 115 of the 
Riverside Literature Series contains selected short poems. 

The real representative poet of the Victorian era, 
Alfred " England's voice " through half a century, 
Tennyson, was Alfred Tennvson. He was in many ways 

1809-92. . . . .J »j 

a striking contrast to his brother poet Brown- 
ing. Closely identified with what pertains to England, 
his interests were absorbed in her history, her people, 
her national development, and her fame. English 
thought is mirrored in his poetry. He kept abreast 
with the scientific movements of the century, was in- 
tensely interested in the discoveries and speculations of 
Darwin,^ Tyndall, Huxley, and Spencer, was attracted 
^ Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82), the greatest among this group 



BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE 



443 



by the doctrine of evolution, but firm in his faith 
and insistent in exalting the spiritual above the mate- 
rial. A conservative in matters of religion and politics, 
he ever upheld the cardinal principle of law. His verse 
is the embodiment of finished art, sweet, melodious, and 
transparently clear. 

Tennyson was born in the little village of Somersby 
in Lincolnshire, where his father was the rec- Birth and 
tor. In the Ode to Memory the poet gives Early Life, 
us glimpses of his early home : — 

The seven elms, the poplars four, 
That stand beside my father's door. 

. the brook that loves 
To pnrl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand 
Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves. 

a sand-built ridge 
Of heaped hills that mound the sea, 
Overblown -with murmurs harsh, 
Or even a lowly cottage whence we see 
Streteh'd wide and wild the waste enormous marsh.'* 

There were twelve children in Somersby rectory, and 
the place has been compared to a nest of song birds ; 
two of Tennyson's brothers were poets and would have 
been better known, perhaps, if their talents had not 
been eclipsed by the genius of Alfred.^ In 1827 a 
little anonymous volume appeared, containing Poems hy 
Two Brothers; these were by Charles and Alfred Ten- 
nyson, Alfred being then about eighteen. The poems 
were largely imitative, but showed variety and pro- 
mise. Byron was naturally the idol of youthful versifiers 
in that day, and Tennyson did not escape the influence. 

" I wander in darkness and sorrow 
Unfriended and cold and alone," 

of scientific scholars, was born in the same year as Tennyson. His 
gi'eat work. On the Origin of Species, appeared in 1859 ; his Descent of 
Man in 1871. 

1 Frederick Tennyson (died 1891) published three volumes of verse; 
Charles Turner (died 1879) published five. 



444 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



he exclaims with genuine Byronic flavor in a boyish com- 
position ; when Byron died he wrote a poem upon the 
event and carved the words "Byron is dead" upon a 
sandstone cliff near the house. 

Tennyson studied in the grammar school at Louth " 
The Early and spent about two years at Trinity Col- 
voiumes. j^gg^ Cambridge, his father's death in 1831 
compelling his withdrawal from the University. While 
at Cambridge he won the Chancellor's medal with his 
prize poem Timhuctoo^ and also published his first vol- 
ume, fifty-three poems in all — for the most part mere 
metrical exercises and studies in poetical effect ; but 
there wepe a few compositions of notable power. In 
one he describes the Poet — 

' Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, 
The love of love." 

In another he discourses upon The Poefs Mind. 
There was one particularly striking composition en- 
titled The Deserted House. It is a picture of death, 
remarkably free from any morbid suggestions, full of 
quiet power and calm restraint. But there was also an 
unfortunate production upon The OwL and this partic- 
ular effusion, with its tuwhits and tuwhoos, furnished 
a congenial text for a sledgehammer article in the jEJd- 
inburgh Review by Christopher North, who always 
wrote with the vim of a blacksmith on occasions of 
this sort. 

" Alfred himself is the greatest owl," he asserted ; " all he 
wants is to be shot and stuffed, and stuck in a glass case, to 
be made immortal — in a museum." 

Nevertheless, in 1832 there appeared a new volume 
of Poems hy Alfred Tennyson^ among them some of 
rare beauty, ever to be linked with the poet's fame. 
Here were The Miller's Daughter^ (Enone^ The Lotos- 



THE PRINCESS 



445 



Eaters^ The Palace of Art ^ A Dream of Fair Wo- 
men^ and The Lady of Shalott. There was great 
variety as well as unusual richness in the poetry here 
presented. " All in all," says Stedman, " a more ori- 
ginal and beautiful volume of poetry was never added 
to our literature. " ^ 

Still the contemporary reviews were unsympathetic 
and severe. Lockhart, in the Quarterly^ ridiculed the 
poet, but at the same time indicated some of the real 
weaknesses of the verse. For the next decade Tenny- 
son devoted himself to the careful revision of his poems 
and the conscientious study of his art. It was not until 
1842 that he again published ; but with the appearance 
of the two volumes in that year, Tennyson found his 
place ; from that time on he was recognized as the 
foremost poet of his age. 

In 1847 appeared The Princess^ a poem of exqui- 
site beauty, but difficult to appreciate unless The 
one notes the significance of its sub-title, — Princess. 
A Medley. Here is indeed a combination of the hu- 
morous and serious, an odd mingling of the heroic 
with the burlesque. The poem begins with a pictur- 
esque description of the festival at Sir Walter Vivian's. 
Stories of old ancestors and their heroic deeds are 
read and told. At last the daughter, Lilia, vigorously 
champions woman's cause, declaring that were she 
some great princess she would build for women, 

" Far off from men a eoUeg-e like a man's, 
And I would teach them all that men are taught." 

Then comes the proposition to tell a seven-fold tale ; — 

" ' Take Lilia, then, for heroine,' clamors one, 
' And make her some great princess, six feet high, 
Grand, epic, homicidal ! ' " 

And the epic of The Princess follows. 

1 Edmund Clarence Stedman, The Victorian Poets. 



446 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



The poem is full of beauties ; apt phrases and strik- 
ing images multiply in profuse succession. Tennyson's 
remarkable gift in the choice of suggestive words is 
nowhere better displayed than in passages like these ; — 

" The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime 
Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end." 

" To them the doors gave way 
Groaning-, and in the vestal entry shrieked 
The virgin marble under iron heels ; " 

in phrases like " oily courtesies," " lucid marbles,'* 
" lapt in the arms of leisure," " the tinsel clink of com- 
pliment," "the rotten pales of prejudice," "the fading 
politics of mortal Rome." 

A later edition of Tlie Princess was further enriched 
with the songs which form the interludes, and empha- 
size the fact that the real heroine of the epic is the 
Child. The serious purpose of the poem is found in 
Part VII., lines 243-279 : — 

" The woman's cause is man's ; they rise or sink 
Together. . . . 

For woman is not undeveloped man, 

But diverse ; could we make her as the man, 

Sweet Love were slain ; his dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man." 

The year that marked the middle of the century was 
The Year ^ 7^^^ Supreme importance in Tennyson's 
1850. career. It was the year in which the poet 
married Emily Sellwood. 

" Her whose gentle will has changed my fate 
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame." 

They had met thirteen years before ; but up to this 
time family circumstances had prevented the poet 
from establishing a home. In 1850 the poet-laureate, 
Wordsworth, died ; and in this year the honor was 



IN MEMORIAM 



447 



conferred upon Tennyson. It was in 1850 also that the 
poet published In Memoriam^ by many regarded as his 
greatest work. 

This noble composition is an elegiac poem, or rather 
series of poems. The story it tells is one of ^ Memo- 
private grief in the loss of a personal friend ; riam. 
but in the development of his theme the poet fits his 
application to the universal experience of human sor- 
row : his grief is but a part of the common woe. The 
note of sincerity rings through it all ; there is no false 
assumption of feeling, no empty sermonizing. The de- 
jection, the hopeless abandonment to grief, the hesitant 
groping after light, the weakness of the dawning faith, 
the insistency of doubt, the beneficence of action, the 
brave philosophy of optimism, the logic of love, the in- 
stinctive confidence in the immortality of life — these 
are phases in the experience of all humanity; never 
have they been more sympathetically and less obtru- 
sively expressed. The poet himself declared, " It is 
rather the cry of the whole human race than mine." 
" It is a very impersonal poem as well as personal." 
This obvious universality of In Memoriam is its most 
impressive feature ; and this is why to many thousands 
it has been in time of bereavement the one great poem 
to which they have turned for sympathy and relief. 

The immediate occasion of its composition was the 
death of Tennyson's intimate friend, a fellow student 
with the poet at Cambridge, Arthur Henry Hallam.^ 
He died at Vienna in 1833. It will be seen that a 
long interval elapsed before In Memoriam appeared. 
The poem was the carefully considered product of these 
intervening years. 

1 Concerning" the character of Hallam, a young- man of remarkable 
gifts, see the account by Mr. Gladstone, reprinted in pamphlet from 
The Youth's Companion (Perry Mason and Company). 



M8 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



In reading In Memoriam^ we need not expect to find 
a deliberate system of philosophy elaborately set forth. 
The philosophy is there, but it is expressed as the poet 
usually expresses what he deems the truth : in gleams 
or bursts of lyric feeling, as a seer describes the pano- 
rama of his vision. It is not fitting that the poet should 
educe an argument — that is preliminary ; he produces 
not harmonics but a harmony. The spiritual experi- 
ence thus related covers a period of some three years, 
the advent of three successive Christmas seasons serv- 
ing as tide-marks in the ebb and flow of the poet's 
faith in 

*' That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

Poetry is a product of something more than official 
The Poet- inspiration. We do not look to the various 
Laureate. royal greetings or national memorials, usually, 
to find the best work of the laureate. Yet Tennyson's 
occasional pieces of this order are not unworthy com- 
positions. The two addresses To the Queen are sin- 
cere and earnest poems. The splendid Ode on the 
Death of the Duke of Wellington has something of an 
official tone, and this is one of the poet's finest produc- 
. tions. This Ode was first published on the morning 
of the great duke's funeral, September 14, 1852, and 
was at first almost universally depreciated. It was 
afterward added to, and its true merit was recognized. 
It was one of Tennyson's own favorites.^ The poem 
Maud (1855), inspired by the event of the Crimean 
War, was received in much the same fashion. 

^ " Up to the time of my father's death, when his friends asked him 
to read aloud from his own poetry, he generally chose Maud, the Ode 
on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, or Guinevere.''^ — Hallam Tenny- 
son, in the biography of his father, vol. i., page 385. 

I 



THE DRAMAS 



449 



The romantic material found in the legends of King 
Arthur, and connected with the quest of the .jj^g rf^yn^ 
Holy Grail, fascinated Tennyson, as it had of the King. 
Spenser and Milton ^ and many poets of lesser rank. 
There had been indications of this interest in several 
early poems — The, Lady of Shalott (1832), 8ir Gala- 
had^ Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere^ and Morte 
d' Arthur (1842) — before the laureate actually began 
upon the wonderful series of epic romances that com- 
prise the Idylls of the King. There was no estab- 
lished order in their production. Enid^ Vivien, Elaine, 
and Guinevere appeared in 1859 ; The Holy Grail, The 
Coming of Arthur, Pelleas and Ettarre, The Passing 
of Arthur in 1869. The Last Tournament was not 
published until 1871 ; Gareth and Lynette the year 
after. Nor is there any definite sequence in the exqui- 
site pageantry of these idylls, other than the natural 
chronology of the events involved. Various estimates 
have been placed upon the work; but this glorious 
idealization of the great legendary king, these impres- 
sive pictures of a chivalrous order disorganized and 
shattered by the subtle effects of secret guilt, will 
remain for most readers an intensely interesting and 
effective creation, one of the world romances in verse. 

Tennyson does not rank among the great dramatic 
poets ; in power of individual characterization The 
he is far inferior to Browning ; at the same 
time his experiments in this field are by no means fail- 
ures. Three ambitious historical dramas, Queen Mary 
(1875), Harold (1876), and Bechet (1884), represent 
his worthiest attempts. Two of these plays have been 
produced, and the last named, Bechet, has, in the hands 
of Sir Henry Irving, met with no small degree of suc- 
cess. It is, however, best appreciated as a reading 
^ See pag-e 185. 



450 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



play. A lighter drama, The Foresters^ was first pre- 
sented in 1892. It added nothing to its author's fame. 

Between 1880 and 1890 several volumes of poetry 
The Close of published, but Tennyson's best work had 
Tennyson's been produced. The poet varied his residence 
between his beautiful estate at Farringford 
in the Isle of Wight and at Aid worth in Surrey, 
where he had established a summer and autumn home. 
In 1883 he accepted a peerage (first offered and de- 
clined in 1865) with the title Baron of Aldworth and 
Farringford. He continued deeply interested in all 
public questions of national concern, was a strong 
Conservative in politics, but believed profoundly in 
the expansion of British power and the promotion 
of England's glory. Something of his old-time vigor 
was shown in Demeter and Other Poems, the last 
collection of poems published before his death ; and 
one beautiful lyric. Crossing the Bar, came like the 
fabled swan-song, the poet's final utterance of hope 
and trust. 

" Twilig"bt and evening- bell, 
And after that the dark ! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
When I embark ; 

*' For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see ray Pilot face to face 
When I have crossed the bar." ^ 

Tennyson died at Aldworth October 5, 1892. His 
family was about him. It was evening ; there was no 
light but that of the full harvest moon which filled the 
room. Upon his bed the volume of Shakespeare, from 

^ This poem, sugg-ested to the poet while crossing- the Solent from 
the Isle of Wight, was designated by Tennyson as the one which he 
wished to appear at the end of the volume containing his completed 
work. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 451 



which he had been reading, still lay open at the dirge 
in Cymheline^ — 

" Fear no more the heat o' the sun, 
Nor the furious winter's rages ; 
Thou thy worldly task hast done, 
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. 



Quiet consummation have ; 
And renowned be thy grave ! " 

Thus was the passing of our last great English poet ; 
his finished work in its entirety the choicest gift to 
permanent literature that the century had to offer in 
its close. 

In reading the poetry of Tennyson, its essentially English 
character is felt. Its source and inspiration is g^gggg, 
national. Compare the titles in the index of his tions for 
poems with the titles of Browning's poems, or 
those of Byron and Shelley, or any other nineteenth century 
poet ; only Wordsworth is comparable with Tennyson in this 
respect. The poems suggestive of classic sources — (Enone, 
Ulysses, Tithonus, Tiresias, Demeter, Persephone, Lucre- 
tius, — may well be studied in their group, with reference 
to their classical quality. That Tennyson was not unsuscep- 
tible to the influence of Theocritus and Vergil is abundantly 
proved by the numerous allusions to those poets hidden in 
his verse (compare the article by Maurice Thompson in The 
Independent, November 17, 1898, and that by W. P. Mus- 
tard in The American Journal of Philology, April, May, 
and June, 1899) . There is much in Tennyson that reminds 
us of Keats, much to suggest the manner of Wordsworth. 
Note a few of these echoes in The Day-Dream, Amphion, 
Walking to the Mail, The Talking Oak, The Golden Tear, 
and Edward Gray. Of that beautiful pastoral masterpiece, 
Dora, Wordsworth himself said : " Mr. Tennyson, I have 
been endeavoring all my life to write a pastoral like your 
Dora, and have not succeeded." ^ But these resemblances 
are only echoes ; the style is truly Tennysonian. 

1 Life of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, by his son, vol. i., p. 265. 



452 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



Alfred Tennyson was not a nature poet — certainly not a 
Attitude worshiper of nature like Wordsworth ; nor was 
toward he the interpreter of nature, adopting the con- 
Nature, ventional tone of poets like Scott, Byron, and 
Shelley. To him there was nothing mystical or transcen- 
dental in nature. She had her mystery to him as to us all ; 
he frankly admitted that ; his fancy, his imagination, did 
not seek to fathom it. 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of your crannies, 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

These six lines express practically Tennyson's nature creed. 
In this connection read the lines On a Mourner and The 
Higher Pantheism. He has no explanation of the life 
which informs ; he leaves the mystery a riddle, he confesses 
that he does not understand. The supernatural element in 
nature Tennyson has no power to reveal. Yet we are not 
to suppose that for him nature had no charm. Not even 
Wordsworth was more keenly alive to her beauty or her 
power. All her forms and varying phases impressed him 
profoundly : bright colors, play of light and shade, the pass- 
ing cloud, the gathering storm, the rise and set of sun, the 
change of season, the silence of the woods, the blossoming of 
flowers, the ripening wheat, the song and flight of birds, 
the restless beating of the sea — these all impressed him, but 
always in relation to human interests, not of or for them- 
selves alone. His invocation to " divinest memory," with its 
Miltonic echoes, an early piece, may be read as one of the 
simplest illustrations of this point. This Ode to Memory 
pictures the surroundings of the Lincolnshire birthplace. 
It is rather as a student of nature that Tennyson writes in 
his maturer poems, whether in descriptive passages or in 
the numerous allusions to natural phenomena with which 
his compositions are abundantly adorned. While still a boy 
he was a keen observer of the habits of birds and beasts and 



ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE 453 



ants and bees. At one time he kept a tame snake in his 
room ; he liked to watch its wonderful sinuosities upon the 
carpet. In one of his private letters he tells a friend of the in- 
terest he took in examining the embryos of two little snakes 
" with bolting eyes and beating hearts," and wished he had 
had a microscope to study them more minutely. The poet 
was a watcher of the heavens and had had a platform built 
on the house roof at Farring-ford, which was a favorite resort 
for him at night. In 1857 Bayard Taylor visited the poet 
and subsequently described a walk with Tennyson across the 
island. Taylor says : " During the conversation with which 
we beguiled the way, I was struck with the variety of his 
knowledge. Not a little flower on the downs which the 
sheep had spared escaped his notice, and the geology of the 
coast, both terrestrial and submarine, was perfectly familiar 
to him." At one time the poet began the compilation of 
a flower dictionary. He bought spy-glasses, with which to 
watch the movements of birds in the ilexes, cedar and fir 
trees. Geology he studied in earnest and trudged on many 
an expedition of discovery with the local geologist at Far- 
ringford. In the beauty of nature he took genuine delight. 
He would walk any distance to see a bubbling brook or a 
tree of unusual stateliness or growth. Sometimes Tennyson 
was moved by the spirit of nature within him to go forth 
from the haunts of men. In 1848 he felt a craving to make 
a lonely sojourn at Bude. " I hear," he said, " that there 
are larger waves there than on any other part of the British 
coast, and must go thither and be alone with God." He was 
ever more profoundly influenced by the sea than by any other 
of nature's manifestations. Features in the landscape that 
impressed him, and the phenomena observed by him, were 
often reproduced in his poetry. His son records a number of 
interesting illustrations of this fact in the biography of his 
father. Thus in the fine passage in Lancelot and Elaine 
beginninof 

" They co-ached their spears and pricked their steeds," etc., 
the poet introduces a simile as foUows : — 



454: FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



" as a wild wave in the wide North-sea 
Green-g-limmering toward the summit, bears with all 
Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, 
Down on a bark," etc. 

This comparison was suggested by an experience during a 
trip to Norway in 1858, described in his journal thus in 
part : " One great wave, green shining^ past with all its crests 
smoking high up beside the vessel." The line in stanza iv. 
of The Daisy — 

*' By bays, the peacock's neck in hue " — 

was similarly suggested during a walk in Cornwall : " Walked 
seaward. Large crimson clover ; sea purple and green, 
like a peacock's neck.'' 

Descriptive passages should be studied in some detail. 
Take the introduction to Enoch Arden : note the details in 
the first nine lines ; sketch or diagram the picture. Compare 
the descriptions in The Dying Swan, The Lotos-Eaters, 
The Voyage of Maeldune, The Lady of Shalott, The Ara- 
bian Nights, with those in The Gardener's Daughter and 
The Miller's Daughter. What difference do you note in 
these two groups — why should it be so ? Make a special 
study of the nature similes and the descriptive passages in 
The Princess, noting especially the remarkable battle nar- 
rative near the close of section v. Compare with this last 
the battle scene in Geraint and Enid. There are some 
wonderful pictures of the sea scattered through the poems : 
read the description of the flood tide in Sea Dreams. It 
might be interesting to note what birds are introduced by 
Tennyson, and how they are described : " the cuckoo told 
his name to all the hills," the " redcap whistled," " the mel- 
low ouzel fluted in the elm," " ring sudden scritches of the 
jay," "where hummed the dropping snipe," "The lark 
could scarce get out his notes for joy. But shook his song to- 
gether," etc. y^hsii flowers grow most freely in Tennyson's 
garden ? A characteristic allusion which shows the scien- 
tific accuracy of Tennyson's manner is found in the compari- 
son {The Princess, v. 187) — 



ARTISTIC METHODS 



455 



" Not a thought, a touch, 
But pure as lines of green that streak the white 
Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves." 

The technique of Tennyson should receive some attention 
from the student ; no other English poet lends Artistic 
himself so readily to this study. Indeed, much Methods, 
concerning the art of poetry may be learned from the study 
of Tennyson's verse. The poet's strict and impartial criti- 
cism of his own productions had its natural result in many 
directions. Since Pope's, there has been no English verse 
so free from flaw. Of his songs, Tennyson himself thought 
the best to be : In the Valley of Cauteretz, Courage, Poor 
Heart of Stone (in Maud), Break, Break, Break, The Bugle 
Song {The Princess), Ask me no More {The Princess), 
Tears, Idle Tears {The Princess), and Crossing the Bar. 
There are some particular lines to which Tennyson has called 
attention as particularly satisfactory to himself. He regarded 
this line (in Maud) as one of the best he had ever written : — 

" Universal ocean softly washing all her warless isles." 

For simple rhythm he regarded as most successful the 
verse : — 

" Come down, Maid, from yonder mountain height." 

Take account of the consonantal sounds in this verse and 
note the effect of these m's and n's, these d's and t's. It is 
by the combination of sounds and rhythms that the poet 
gains his effects : the matter of consonants and vowels, 
therefore, is one of considerable significance in the mechan- 
ics of this art. Tennyson was exceedingly sensitive to the 
unpleasant sound of the letter s, when too much in evidence. 
Ridding the line of this disagreeable sibilation, he called 
kicking the geese out of the boat." " I never put s's to- 
gether in any verse of mine," he said ; " my line is not as 
often quoted, 

" And freedom broadens slowly down," 

but 

" And freedom slowly broadens down." 
He considered the close of his Tiresias to be the best of his 



456 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



blank verses. Among his many beautiful similes he was 
most fond of that in Locksley Hall : — 

Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands, 
Every movement, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight." 

The student may with advantage study these examples in 
their immediate connection and discover for himself similar 
effects in other passages. 

In the selection of melodious words Tennyson was re- 
markably happy ; many of his very early poems, in which 
occur the frequent repetitions of such rhymes as shiver, 
quiver^ river; low, mellow ; ambrosial, carol; aweary, 
dreary ; cheerly, clearly ; lispeth, welleth, dwelleth, swelleth, 
etc., are obvious experiments in the effect of sound. With a 
view to this quality of the verse, read The Lady of Shalott, 
The Lotos-Eaters, the Ode on Wellington, and such pas- 
sages as are met in other poems. What quality in the words 
makes the verse so effective in the songs The Splendor Falls 
and Sweet and Low {The Princess), in the early Song, — 

" The -winds as at their hour of birth," 
and in such lines as these, in Demeter : — 

" What sound was dearest in his native dells ? 
The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells, 
Far-far-away." 

Tennyson is a master of concise phrasing. A dreamer 
sees a tiny fleet of glass wrecked on a golden reef : — 

"The little fleet 
Touch'd, clink' d, and clash' d, and vanish' d." 

{Sea Breams.) 
" He makes no friends who never made a foe." 
" Then trust me not at all, or all in all." 
" His honor rooted in dishonor stood, 
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." 

{Lancelot and Elaine.) 

The imagery of Tennyson's poetry is perfect. There is 
no straining of comparisons, no mixing of meta- 
phors. The poet's perfected judgment was author- 
itative. Simple, pure, flawless, they may well be described 



PORTRAYAL OF CHARACTER 



457 



by that splendid figure of the laureate's own coinage, as 

Jewels five-words-long- 

That on the streteh'd forefinger of all Time 
Sparkle forever." 

{The Princess, ii. 351.) 

Was there ever a comparison more faultless than this ? — 

" Music that gentlier on the spirit lies 
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes." 

{The Lotos-Eaters.) 

The poet's name will be always associated with what is 
called the In Memoriam stanza, an arrangement 

Metre. 

skillfully used by him. This measure he thought 
to have been originated by himself, until told that it had 
been used both by Sir Philip Sidney and by Ben Jonson. 
It is admirably adapted to the purpose of the elegy. Tenny- 
son employs great variety in metrical forms ; but further than 
recognizing this variety and the special fitness to the theme 
of the various arrangements, it is hardly necessary for the 
student to go. It will be sufficient if he attains a clearer 
perception and more intelligent enjoyment of the broader 
yet delicate effects of rhythm and tone which constitute the 
real music of the j^oet's song. 

Of the dramas, the student would best take Becket for 
his study, noting the artistic effect of the Prologue, portrayal 
with its significant game of chess, the self-revela- of Charac- 
tion of Henry's impulsive, irresponsible character, 
the strength of Eleanor, and the calm, conscientious, master- 
ful spirit of Becket. Follow the development of the action, 
noting the special dramatic moments in Becket's career, such 
as the scene with Fitzurse, with Rosamund (Act I., scene 1), 
with the prelates (Act I., scene 3), the scene of Becket's 
temporary triumph (Act II., scene 2), the moment of his 
final resolve at the close of Act III. (the climax), and the 
murder of the archbishop in the cathedral (Act V., scene 3). 
Act IV., in which Eleanor and Rosamund meet, is worthy 
of special attention — an incident of remarkable dramatic 
intensity and interest. Tennyson, like Browning, made use 
of the dramatic monologue. His success with this form of 



458 FROM WORDSWORTH TO TENNYSON 



composition should be noted. Ulysses is a good example, 
also St. Simeon Stylites ; note the first as an example of 
classic characterization, the second as a study of medie- 
valism. Great dramatic force is attained in The First 
Quarrel. Most of the monologues in dialect, like The 
Northern Farmer, The Grandmother, The Village Wife, 
and The Spinster's Sweet-Arts, are humorous poems. In 
The Northern Cobbler we have an eccentric character but 
a serious theme. 

Good editions of Tennyson's poems are the Cambridge 
Brief Bib- Edition (Houghton, Mifilin and Company) and 
liography. j'he Works of Tenmjson (1 vol., Macmillan). Nu- 
merous school editions of selected poems exist, among them 
Numbers 73, 99, 111 of the Riverside Literature Series — the 
first containing four of the Idylls of the King, the second 
Enoch Arden and other poems, the third The Frincess, 
edited by W. J. Rolf e. The Princess, edited by A. S. Cook, 
in the Standard English Classics (Ginn), and The Princess, 
edited by A. J. George (Heath), are excellent text-books. 
The authoritative biography of the poet is the Life of 
Alfred Tennyson (2 vols.), by his son, Hallam Tennyson 
(Macmillan). In the English Men of Letters Series the 
Tennyson is by Alfred Lyall. There is a brief Life of 
Tennyson by A. Waugh (United States Book Company). 
Of the commentaries on Tennyson, The Poetry of Tenny- 
son, by Henry van Dyke (Scribner), Tennyson, his Art and 
his Relation to Modern Life, by Stopford Brooke, and A 
Tennyson Primer, by W. M. Dixon (Dodd, Mead and Com- 
pany), are especially recommended. Tennyson's In Memo- 
riam : Its Purpose and Structure, by J. F. Genung (Hough- 
ton, Mifflin and Company), should be used in studying the 
Elegy. Refer to E. C. Stedman's The Victorian Poets 
(Houghton, Mifflin and Company). In studying The Idylls 
of the King, read Tennyson's Idylls of the King a7id Arthu- 
rian Story, by M. W. Maccalum (Macmillan), or Tenny- 
son's Idylls of the King, by Harold Littledale (Macmillan). 
Studies in Literature : Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning, 
by Edward Dowden, will be useful for general reference upor 



THE MINOR POETS 



459 



both these poets ; also The Great Poets and their Theology, by 
Augustus H. Strong (American Baptist Publication Society). 

To the generation of Browning and Tennyson belong 
the numerous minor poets of the Victorian The Minor 
era : Edward FitzGerald (1809-83), author ^oets. 
of a remarkable version of The Ruhdiydt of the Persian 
poet Omar Khayyam; Arthur Hugh Clough (1819- 
61), the poet of spiritual unrest, of doubt and struggle, 
a friend of Matthew Arnold, and the subject of that 
poet's elegiac poem Thyrsis ; Dante Gabriel Eos- 
SETTi (1828-82), painter as well as poet, prominent 
among the Preraphaelite Brotherhood, author of The 
Blessed Damozel and The House of Life. William 
Morris (1834-96), a minor poet only in comparison 
with the two great leaders of the era, was the most fa- 
mous of the Preraphaelites. He introduced the spirit 
of art into the mechanic trades ; and, like Ruskin, 
taught and practiced the principles of socialism in con- 
nection wdth his craft. His literary themes he found 
in the past. His first volume of lyrics. The Defence of 
Guinevere (1858), represents the romance of medi- 
evalism ; The Life and Death of Jason (1867) is 
based on Grecian legend. His masterpiece. The Earthly 
Paradise (1870), is a collection of tales of many lands, 
north, south, east, and west, bound together in a roman- 
tic narrative, with all the art of the old French story- 
tellers, and not unlike that of Chaucer himself. Morris 
is the author, also, of a long series of prose romances, 
of which The House of the Wolfings and The Land 
of the Glittering Plain are perhaps the best known. 
Like the poems, these works are full of the dreamy 
medieval atmosphere which charmed his spirit, and 
are as much poetry as prose ; they are imaginative, 
picturesque in the extreme, and almost archaic in their 
pure Saxon diction. In all these compositions he is as 



460 FROM WORDSWOKTH TO TENNYSON 



pronounced a romanticist as Keats, creating works of 
beauty because he delights in beautiful creations, and 
illustrating perfectly the principle of art for art's sake. 

One poet, still living, should be mentioned in this 
group, for his generation is that of those recorded 
here. Algeknon Chakles Swinburne (born 1837) 
was an early associate of Morris and Rossetti. He is 
the author of many ballads, lyrics, epics, and dramas. 
His strongest work is the Atalanta in Calydon (1864). 
Swinburne is recognized as a master of technique in 
verse construction and of musical effect — one of the 
greatest masters of these qualities in our literature. 

Prose and poetry — history, fiction, drama, essay — 
the flood of literature rolls on its continuous 
course. Just in the present we think we miss 
the broad, strong sweep of its earlier power; the energy 
of this age is perhaps finding its expression in other 
fields ; the inspiration of its experience and achieve- 
ments has not yet been felt ; the literature of the new 
century has not yet begun. But the past is our herit- 
age : what a heritage it is ! what glorious minds these 
men possessed ! what glorious souls ! And these are 
forever our possession, in our books. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A. B. C, Chaucer's, 65. 

Abbotsford : Scott, 338 ; map, 465, Ca. 

AbeUino, Zschokke's, 334. 

Aberdeen: BjTon, 351. 

Abou Ben Adhem, 369. 

Absalom and Achitophel, 218, 219, 250. 

Absentee, The, 413. 

Abt Vogler, 437. 

Account of the Greatest English Poets, 

Addison's, 226. 
Adam Bede, 426. 

Addison, Joskph, mentioned, 223, 239, 
241, 261, 267, 285, 2S9, 369, 374, 395 ; 
account of, 225-237 ; travels, 226 ; The 
Campaign, 226, 227 ; Spectator, 232. 

233 ; Sir Roger de Coverley, 233 ; Cato, 
234; marriage, 234; Secretary of State, 

234 ; death, 234; study, 235-237; Macau- 
lay's Essay on, 393. 

Address to ike Irish People, Shelley's, 
359. 

Addresses of the Soul to the Body, 27. 

Adelmorn the Outlaw, 334. 

Adonais, 361,365, 411. 

Advancement of Learning, Bacon's, 175. 

^neid, translation of, 97. 

.^thelstau. King, 27. 

Age of Chaucer, The, 59-64. 

Aidan, the missionary, 19, 20. 

Alastor, 360. 

Albixtts, 48. 

Alcander, Prince of Bhodes, 250. 
Alchemist, The, 148. 
Alcuin, 31, 43. 
Aldborough, map, 465, Eb. 
Alderney, map, 465, Cd. 
Aid winkle : Dryden, 217 ; map, 465, Db. 
Aldworth : Tennyson, 450 ; map, 465, 
Dc. 

Alexander, stories of, 44. 

Alexander and Campaspe, Lyly's, 125. 

Alexander's Feast, 220. 

Alpked, King, mentioned, 6, 36, 43, 68; 
account of, 31-34 ; Bede, 22, 23, 34 ; 
Boet hills, 33; Orosius, 33 ; Gregory, 34 ; 
love of learning, 32 ; Pastoral Care, 32, 
33; schools, 34; The Chronicle, 34, 35. 

Alfred, Sayings of, 53. 

Alice Fell. 326. 

All the Year Bound, 420. 

Allington, map, 465, Ec. 

Alliteration in Anglo-Saxon verse, 17 ; 
Layamon's Brut, 47 ; Piers the Plow- 
man, 55 ; euphuism, 124. 

Alloway Kirk, map, 465, Ba. 

Almanack, Cruikshank's, 431. 



Alphonsus King of Arragon, Greene's, 
125. 

Alton Locke, 429. 

Amelia, in Vanity Fair, 424. 

America, History of, Robertson's, 301. 

American Notes, 420. 

Amesbury, map, 465, Dc. 

Amoretti, Spenser's, 105. 

Amourists, The, 96. 

Anatomy of Melancholy, The, 178. 

Ancren Riwle, The, 53. 

Angles, The, 4, 5, 36. 

Anglesey, map, 465, Bb. 

Anglia, East, 5, 6. 

Anglo-Norman Period, 41-81. 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 27, 34 ; descrip- 
tion, illustration, 35. 

Anglo-Saxon Period, 1-40; map, 7. Its 
limits, 6; poetry, 8-29; its form, 16, 17, 
22 ; its imagery, 18, 27 ; its spirit, 17, 
19, 22, 26 ; manuscripts, 26. 

Anglo-Saxon poetry, 8-29. 

Anglo-Saxon prose, 29-35. 

Anglo-Saxons, The, 8, 14; the hall, 8; 
religion, 4, 5 ; conversion, 19 ; scholar- 
ship, 30, 31, 32. 

Annals of Winchester, 27. 

Annan, map, 465, Ca. 

Anne, age of, 223-225 ; politics, 223 ; 
parties, 224 ; morals, 224 ; literature, 
225 ; Defoe, 267. 

Annus Mirabilis, 218. 

Auselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 43. 

Antiquary, The, 338. 

Appleby, map, 465, Ca. 

Appreciations, 411. 

Arbuthnot, John, 247, 257. 

Arcades, 184. 

Arcadia, The Countess of Pembroke's, 
100, 266. 

Areopagitica, The, 186. 

Ariel, in The Tempest, 146. 

Aenold. Matthew, mentioned, 390, 432, 
459 ; account of, 410, 411. 

Arnold of Rugby, 410. 

AiTaignment of Paris, Peele's, 125. 

Arran, Island of, map, 465, Ba. 

Arthur, King, stories of, 44, 47 ; in 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 48 ; Malory's 
3Iorte Darthur, 84 ; Faerie Queene, 104 ; 
Milton, 185 ; Tennyson, 449. 

Artificial school. The, 220, 222, 253, 254, 
261, 265, 327. 

Ascham, Roger, mentioned, 83, 89 ; ac- 
count of, 92, 93. 

Ashestiel : Scott, 337. 



466 



INDEX 



Asolo, 435, 

Assembly of Birds, 68. 

Astrsea Redux, 217. 

Astrophel, Spenser's, 105. 

Astrophel and Stella, 99, 134. 

At the Grave of Burns, 324. 

Atalanta in Calydon, 460. 

Athelney, map, 7, Bd. 

Atterbuey, Francis, 257. 

Auchinleck, map, 4G5, Ba. 

Augiistan age of English prose, 222-248 ; 

characteristics, 223. 
Augustine, the Apostle to the Saxons, 19. 
Aurora Leigh, 437. 
Austen, Jane, account of, 413-415. 
Autobiographic Sketches, De Quincey's, 

378, 383. 
Avon (ashes of Wyclif), 57. 
Avon River, map, 465, Cb. 
Ayenbit, Inwyt, 54. 
Ayr, map, 465, Ba. 

Bachelor'' s Complaint, A, 374. 

Bacon, Francis, mentioned, 101, 105, 
108, 134, 139, 178 ; accoimt of, 170-178 ; 
early life, 171 ; Essex, 171, 172 ; essays, 
171, 174, 176; honors, 172; Novum 
Organum, 172, 175 ; disgrace, 173 ; 
closing years, 174 ; death, 174 ; induc- 
tive system, 174 ; study, 176-178 ; Ma- 
caulay's Essay on, 392, 393, 431. 

Badman, Mr., Bunyan's, 210. 

Bale, John, 118. 

Ballad upon a Wedding, Suckling's, 204. 

Ballads, The, 47 ; of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, 88. 

Banbury, map, 465, Db. 

Bangor, maj), 465, Bb. 

Barchester Towers, 428. 

Bard, The, 306. 

Bard's Epitaph, A, 312. 

Barnaby Rudge, 420. 

Barnstaple, map, 465, Be. 

Barrett, Elizabeth, 436. 

Barry Lyndon, 423. 

Bath : Jane Austen, 414 ; map, 465, Cc. 

Battle Abbey, map, 465, Ec. 

Battle narratives in verse, 27, 28. 

Battle of Alcazar, Peele's, 125. 

Battle of Brunnanbxirh, 27 ; quoted, 28 ; 
mentioned, 35. 

Battle of the Books, 240, 241. 

Baxter, Richard, 214. 

Beaconsfield, map, 465, Dc. 

Beaumont, Francis, 150. 

Becket, 449, 457. 

Bbckford, William, 333. 

Becky Sharp, in Vanity Fair, 424. 

Bede, mentioned, 20, 21, 22, 43, 48 ; ac- 
count of, 29-31; Csedmon, 22, 23; 
works, 30 ; scholarship, 30, 31 ; Al- 
fred's translation, 34. 

Bede, Adam, in Adam Bede, 426, 427. 

Bedford : Bunyan, 207 , 209, 210 ; Butler, 
221 ; map, 465, Db. 

Bee, The, 295. 

Beggar's Opera, The, 264. 

Belinda, 413. 



Bell, Currer, pen-name of Charlotte 

Bronte, 425. 
Bells and Pomegranates, 436. 
Bemerton, map, 465, Dc. 
Beowulf, mentioned, 5, 28, 36 ; quotation, 
8, 9, 16, 18 ; the poem, 10-14 ; inter- 
pretation, 14, 16; facsimile of manu- 
script, 15; manuscript described, 16, 
mentioned, 26. 

Beowulf, the hero, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16. 

Berwick-upon-Tweed, map, 465, Ca. 

Besant, Walter, quoted, 420. 

Betrothed, The, 339. 

Bevis of Hampton, 44. 

Bible, the English, Wyclif, 56, 58 ; Tyn- 
dale, 90 ; Coverdale, 90 ; Cranmer, 91 ; 
Geneva, 91 ; King James, 91 ; influence 
on Bunyan, 212 ; on Ruskin, 403. 

Bickerstaff, 241, 242. 

Bideford, map, 465, Be. 

Bilton, map, 465, Db. 

Binfield : Pope, 250 ; map, 465, Dc. 

Biographia Literaria, 323. 

Birkenhead, map, 465, Cb. 

Birmingham, map, 465, Db. 

Black Dwarf, The, 338. 

Blackivood's Magazine, 366, 367, 381, 383, 
384, 387, 416, 426. 

Blair, Robert, 264, 304. 

Blank verse, Surrey's uSEneid, 94 ; in 
Gorboduc, 116, 306. • 

Bleak House, 420, 422. 

Blessed Damozel, The, 459. 

Blot in the ''Scutcheon, A, 436. 

Blyth, map, 465, Da. 

Boccaccio, 59, 67, 68, 71. 

Boethius, Alfred's translation, 33, 68 ; 
Chaucer's translation, 67. 

BoiLEAu, Nicolas, 216, 252. 

Bolingbroke, Lord (Henry St. John), 
mentioned, 256, 259, 301. 

Book of Martyrs, Pox's, 108. 

Book of Snobs, The, 423. 

Boston, map, 465, Db. 

BoswELL, James, 284 ; acquaintance with 
Johnson, 287, 288, 289, 290, 296. 

Bosworth Field, map, 465, Db. 

Bournemouth, maj), 465, Dc. 

Bowge of Courte, The, 87. 

" Boz," pen-name of Dickens, 419. 

Bradford, map, 465, Db. 

Braich-y-PwU, map, 465, Bb. 

Brantwood : Ruskin, 408; map, 465, Ca. 

Bravo of Venice, The, 334. 

Brecon, map, 465, Cc. 

Bride of Abydos, The, 338, 353. 

Bride of Lammermoor, The, 338. 

Bridge water, map, 465, Cc. 

Brighton, map, 465, Dc. 

Briqsof Ayr, The, 311. 

Bristol : Langland, 56 ; Defoe, 270 ; 
Southey, 332 ; map, 465, Cc. 

Britain and the English, 2-7 ; the Ro- 
m.ans, 2 ; the Teutons, 3. 

Britons, The, 2, 4, 49. 

Bronte, Charlotte, 425. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 178. 

Browning, Robert, mentioned, 389, 390, 



1 



INDEX 



467 



432, 442, 449, 459 ; quoted, 141 ; ac- 
count of, 432-442 ; parentage, child- 
hood, 432; education, 433 ; the definite 
plan of work, 433; Pauline, Paracel- 
sus, 434 ; Strafford, Sordello, Pippa 
Passes, 435 ; Bdls and Pomegranates, 

436 ; Elizabeth Barrett, 436, 437 ; Italy, 

437 ; The Ring and the Book, 437, 438 ; 
philosophy, death, 438 ; study, 438-442. 

Browning, Sharpe's Life of, 433. 
Brunnanburh, Battle of, 27 ; quoted, 

28 ; mentioned, 35. 
Brunne, map, 465, Db. 
Brunne, Robert Mannjng of, 49, 54. 
Brut, Layamon's, 47, 48, 49 ; Wace's, 48, 

49. 

Brutus, in Julius Ccesar, 144. 
Buckhurst, map, 465, Dc. 
Buckingham, map, 465, Dc. 
Budleigh, map, 465, Cc. 
BtTLWER, Edwaed (Lopd Lytton), 415, 
416, 431. 

BuNTAN, John, 206-214 ; early life, 207 ; 
a soldier, 207 ; marriage, 207, 208 ; re- 
ligious experience, 208 ; Bedford Jail, 
209, 210 ; sermons, 210 ; Pilgrim's 
Progress, 210, 211-214 ; later life, 210 ; 
death, 211 ; title - page of Pilgrim''s 
Progress, 213; mentioned, 221, 244, 
267, 270. 

Burke, Edmund, mentioned, 2, 223, 238, 
289, 290, 296 ; account of, 301-303. 

Bume-Jones, Edward, 404. 

BuENEY, Frances, 291. 

Burns, Robert, mentioned, 86, 265, 316, 
* 317, 324, 325, 369, 396, 399 ; account of, 
310-314 ; fo]k-sona;s, 310 ; ploughman- 
poet, 311, 312 ; The Cotter's Saturday 
Night, 311 ; Edinburgh, 311; marriage, 
312 ; death, 312 ; appreciation, 312, 
313 ; study, 313, 314. 

Burns, Life of, 387. 

Burton, Robert, 178, 374. 

Bury St. Edmunds, map, 465, Eb. 

Busirus, Young's, 264. 

Busy Body, The, 295. 

Bute, map, 465, Ba. 

Butler, Samuel, 221, 246. 

Byrhtnoth, in Battle of 3faldon, 28. 

Byron, Lord, mentioned, 338, 357, 358, 
361, 362, 365, 368, 387, 388, 392, 403, 
431, 433, 443, 444 ; account of, 350-357; 
ancestry, 351 ; mother's character, 351; 
Harrow and Cambridge, 351, 352 ; 
hours of idleness, 352 ; cynicism, 352 ; 
House of Lords, 352 ; English Bards, 
3.52; travels, 353 ; metrical romances, 
353, 354 ; marriage, 354 ; in Italy, 354 ; 
Don Juan, 355; the Greek Revolution, 
355 ; death, 355 ; study, 355-357. 

Byron, Macaulay's Essay on, 393. 

C^DMON, mentioned, 18, 36, 47 ; account 
of, 21-23 ; his vision, 21 ; his hymn, 
22 ; works, 22, 23 ; Genesis, Exodus, 
23. 

Caerleon, map, 465, Cc. 
Caermarthen, map, 465, Be. 



Caernarvon, map, 465, Bb. 
Caesar, Julius, 2. 
Cmars, The, 383. 
Cain, 354. 

Caleb Williams, 334. 

Cam River, majJ, 465, Eb. 

Cambridge, map, 7, Dc ; 465, Eb. 

Camelford, map, 465, Be. 

Campaign, The, 226, 227. 

Can you Forgive her, 429. 

Canterbury : the scene of Chaucer's pil- 
grimage, 71 ; birthplace of Marlowe, 
126 ; map, 7, Dd ; 465, Ec. 

Canterbury Tales, The, mentioned, 59, 
68, 70, 114, 260, 266 ; described, 71, 
72 ; Caxton's edition, 84 ; facsimile of 
Caxton's page, 85 ; paraphrased by 
Dryden, 220. 

Captain Singleton, 272. 

Cardiif, map, 465, Cc. 

Cardigan, map, 465, Bb. 

Caeew, Thomas, 203 ; quoted, 204. 

Carisbrooke, map, 465, Dc. 

Carlisle, map, 465, Ca. 

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 397, 400. 

Carlyle, Thomas, mentioned, 2, 390, 402, 
404, 410 ; quoted, 389, 431 ; account of, 
396-402 ; parentage, 396 ; student life, 
396, 397 ; years of struggle, 397 ; mar- 
riage, 397 ; Sartor Resartus, 398 ; lec- 
turer and historian, 399 ; essayist and 
biographer, 400 ; death, 400 ; the 
teacher, 400 ; study, 401, 402. 

Caroline Poets, The, 203. 

Casa Guidi Windows, 437. 

Cassius, in Jidivs Ccesar, 144. 

Castaway, The, 309, 310. 

Castle of Indolence, The, 265. 

Castle of Otranto, The, 333. 

Castle of Perseverance, 112. 

Castle Rackrent, 413. 

Castle Spectre, The, 334. 

Castletown, Isle of Man, map, 465, Ba. 

Catiline, 148. 

Cato, Addison's, 234. 

Cavalier Poets, The, 203. 

Caxton, William, account of, 84 ; fac- 
simile of his page, 85. 

Caxtons, The, 416. 

Celtic words in English, 36. 

Celts, The, 2, 3, 6, 49. 

Cenci, The, 361. 

Cervantes, 403. 

Chalfont St. Giles, map, 465, Dc. 
Chansons de Gestes, 43. 
Chapman, George, 151, 366. 
Charlemagne, stories of, 43, 44. 
Charles V., Robertson's, 301. 
Chartism, 400. 

Chatterton, Thomas, 307, 366. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, mentioned, 42, 54, 
56, 58. 59, 83, 80, 92, 102, 106, 113, 130, 
225, 266, 325, 366, 459 ; age of, 59-64 ; 
society, 60 ; evils of the time, 62 ; Lon- 
don, 63, 64 ; The Tabard Inn, 64 ; ac- 
count of, 64-75; youth, 64, 65; early 
works, 65, 66 ; Italian tours, 66, 67 ; 
Troilus and Criseyde, 68 ; allegories. 



468 



INDEX 



68, 69 ; later works, 69, 70 ; The Can- 
terbury Tales, 71, 72 ; death, 72 ; ap- 
preciation, 72-75 ; nature poetry, 73 ; 
influence upon language, 74 ; study, 
75 ; paraphrased by Dryden, 220. 

Chelmsford, map, 465, Ec. 

Chelsea : Carlyle, 399. 

Chertsey, map, 465, Dc. 

Chester : a Roman town, 3 ; miracle plays, 
111; map, 7, Be ; 465, Cb. 

Chevy Chase, 88. 

Chichester, map, 465, Dc. 

Childe Harold^s Pilgrimage, 338, 353, 
354. 

Child's History of England, The, 420. 

Chinese Letters, The, 295. 

Chretien de Troyes, 47. 

Christ, The, of Cynewulf, 24, 25, 27 ; 

quoted, 25. 
Christabel, 323. 

Christian, in Pilgrim''s Progress, 267. 
Christian Hero, Steele's, 227. 
Christianity in Britain, 19 ; influence on 

early English poetry, 20. 
Christmas Tales, The, 420. 
ChrisVs Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years 

Ago, 374. 

Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, 27, 34, 35, 47. 
Chronicle, Robert of Gloucester's, 49 ; 

Robert Manning's, 49. 
Chronicle of Edward /., Peele's, 125. 
Chronicles, Holinshed's, 117. 
Clu"onicles, Middle English, 47. 
Church, The, in Britain, 3 ; conversion of 

the Saxons, 19. 
Church History, Fuller's, 57, 214. 
Church Porch, The, Herbert's, 200. 
Churchyard poetry, 304. 
CiBBER, CoLLEY, The Ditncittd, 258. 
Citizen of the World, Tlie, 295. 
Clarissa Harlowe, 275. 
Claekb, Charles Cowden, 365, 366. 
Cleobury Mortimer, map, 465, Cb. 
Clevedon, Coleridge, 319 ; map, 465, Cc. 
Clive, Macaulay's Essay on, 393. 
Cloister and the Hearth, The, 416, 429. 
Clodgh, Arthur Hugh, 411, 459. 
Clovelly, map, 465, Be. 
Club, The, in The Spectator, 233, 235. 
Club, The Literary, 289, 296. 
Clyde River, 2 ; map, 465, Ba. 
Cock and the Fox, The, Dryden's, 220. 
Cockermouth : Wordsworth, 317 ; map, 

465, Ca. 

Coffee-Houses, 220, 229, 230, 231, 239, 
243. 

Colchester, map, 7, Dd. 

Coleridge, S. T., mentioned, 214, 316, 317, 
332, 333, 369, 370, 371, 373, 381, 383, 
397, 408, 431; account of, 319-324; 
childhood, 319 ; radical ideas, Pantis- 
ocracy, 319 ; lyrical ballads, 320 ; Ger- 
many, 320; Christabel, Kubla Khan, 
323 ; prose, 323 ; death, 324. 

Colet, John, 83. 

Colin Clout, Spenser's, 104. 

Collins, William, 304. 

Colombe's Birthday, 436. 



Colonel Jacque, 272. 
Columba, the Irish missionary, 20. 
Colyn Clout, Skelton's, 87. 
Comedy, The first, 115. 
Coming of Arthur, TAe, 449. 
Commonwealth, The, 181. 
Compleat Angler, The, 215. 
Compleynt to /lis Purs, Chaucer's, 72. 
Compleynte to Pile, 65. 
Comus, 184. 

Conduct of the Allies, The, 242. 
Confessio Amantis, 59. 
GoNGREVE, William, 238, 239. 
Coniston, Lake : Ruskin, 408. 
Conquest of Granada, Dryden's, 218. 
Contention betwixt the Two Famous 

Houses of York and Lancaster, The, 

118. 

Conversion of the Saxons, 19 ; in Words- 
worth's sonnets, 19. 
Cooper's HiU, map, 465, Dc. 
Corinna, Herri ck's, 205. 
Cornhill 3Iagazine, The, 425. 
Corsair, The, 353, 354. 
Cotter''s Saturday Night, The, 311. 
Count Jxdian, 388. 
Couplet, The, 206, 220, 249, 306, 352. 
Covenant, The, 181. 

Coventry : miracle plays. 111; mysteries, 
111, 117; Shakespeare, 131; map, 465, 
Db. 

CovERDALE, MiLES, Bishop of Exeter, 90, 
91. 

Cowley, Abraham, 203. 

CowPER, William, mentioned, 316, 317, 
358; account of, 307-310; timidity, 
308 ; the Olney hymns, 308 ; John Gil- 
pin, 308 ; The Task, 309. 

Coxwold, map, 465, Da. 

Craigenputtoch : Carlyle, 397 ; map, 465, 
Ca. 

Cranford, 425. 
Cranmer''s Bible, 91. 
Crashaw, Richard, 201, 202. 
Crawley, Rawdon, in Vanity Fair, 424. 
Critical Review, The, 295. 
Criticism, 216. 

Criticism, Essay on (Pope's), 253; Essays 
in, 410 ; The Function of, 410. 

CromweWs Letters and Speeches, 400 ; 
Cromwell, in Carlyle's Heroes, 399. 

Cross, Wilbur L., quoted, 413. 

Crossing the Bar, 450. 

Croivn 'of Wild Olive, The, 406. 

Culture and Anarchy, 411. 

Cura Pastoralis, 33, 34. 

Currer Bell, pen-name of Charlotte 
Bronte, 425. 

Curse of Kehama, The, 332. 

Cursor Mundi, 54. 

Cymbeline, in Geoffrey of Monmouth, 
48. ■ 

Cymri, The, 2 ; Cymric words in Eng- 
lish, 36. 

Cynewulf, account of, 23-26 ; works, 24, 
25, 26 ; runes, 24 ; quoted, 20, 21 ; Ju- 
dith, 29 ; mentioned, 36, 49. 

Cynthia''s Revels, 148. 



INDEX 



469 



Daily Cournni, The, 228. 
Danelagh, The, 37. 

Danes, Tlie, 6, 12, 13, 27 ; wars of Alfred, 

31, 32, 35, 36 ; Hrothgar, in Beowulf, 

11, 43; Orm, 53. 
Daniel Deronda, ill. 
Dante, 67, 82, 96, 399. 
D'Arblay, 3Iadame, Macaulay's Essay 

on, 393. 
Dartmoor, map, 465, Cc. 
Dartmouth, map, 465, Cc. 
Daewin, Charles Robert, 442, 443. 
David Balfour, 430. 
David Copperfield, 417, 420. 
David Copperfield, in David Copperfield, 

419. 

Davideis, Cowley's, 203. 

De Augmentis Scientiarum, 175. 

De Consolatione Philosophise, Alfred's 
translation, 33, 68 ; Chaucer's transla- 
tion, 67. 

Dean, Forest of, map, 465, Cc. 

Dean Prior, map, 465, Cc. 

Death in the Desert, A, 437. 

Death of Hoel, The, 306. 

Death of the Duke of Wellington, Ode on 
the, 448. 

Decameron, The, 59, 71. 

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 
300. 

Decline of the stage, 151. 

Defence of Guinevere, The, 459. 

Defence of Poesy, 99. 

Defence of Poetry, Shelley's, 361. 

Defensio Secunda, Milton's, 186, 187. 

Defoe, Daniel, mentioned, 228, 229, 274, 
275, 420 ; account of, 267-273 ; educa- 
/" tion, 268 ; The Beview, 208 ; facsimile 
' of frontispiece, 269 ; Robinson Crusoe, 
270 ; realism, 271 ; narratives, 271, 272 ; 
roeue narratives, 272 ; misfortunes, 
273 ; death, 273 ; the " novel," 273. 

Dekker, Thomas, 151. 

Demeier and Other Poems, 450. 

Denbigh, map, 465, Cb. 

Denmark, Mallet's History of, 307. 

Deor''s Lament, 10, 27. 

Deptford, map, 465, Ec. 

De Qdincey, Thomas, mentioned, 2, 369, 
388, 395, 397, 431 ; account of, 376-386 ; 
characteristics, 377 ; childhood, 378 ; 
imagination, 378 ; effect of sister's 
death, 379 ; experience in London, 
380 ; friendships, 381 ; marriage, 381 ; 
the opium-eater, 381 , 382 ; the Confes- 
sions, 382 ; magazine articles, 383 ; 
death, 384 ; study, 385, 386. 

Derby, map, 465, Db. 

Derwent, The (Wordsworth), 317. 

Derwent Water, map, 465, Ca. 

Descent of Man, 443. 

Descent of Odin, The, 306. 

Descriptive Sketches, 319. 

Desdemona, in Othello, 144. 

DeseHed House, The, 444. 

Deserted Village, The, 293, 296. 

Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse, 66. 

Deucalion, 406. 



Development of the English Novel, 

Cross's, 413. 
Diaries, of Pepys and Evelyn, 215. 
Dickens, Charles, mentioned, 389, 390, 

423, 428, 429, 431 ; account of, 417-422; 

childhood, 417; early struggles, 418; 

first contribution, 419 ; the novels, 420; 

characteristics, 421 ; philanthropic pur- 
pose, 421 ; position, 422. 
Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, 

84. 

Dictionary, Johnson's, 281, 285, 286, 
Discourses in America, 411. 
Discovery of Guiana, Raleigh's, 101. 
Disraeli, Benjamin (Lord Beaconsfield), 
416. 

Dissertation on Roast Pig, A, 374. 
Divine Comedy, Dante's, 67. 
Divine Emblems, Quarles's, 201. 
Do Wei, Do Bet, Do Best, 56. 
Dobbin, in Vanity Fair, 424. 
Doings of the Senate of Lilliput, 284. 
Dolgelly, map, 465, Cb. 
Dombey and Son, 420, 422. 
Dombey, Paul, in Dombey and Son, 419, 
422. 

Domett, Alfred, 433. 

Don Juan, 353, 355. 

Don Quixote, 270. 

Doncaster, a Roman town, 3. 

Donne, John, 200. 

Dorchester, map, 465, Cc. 

Douglas, Gavin, 86. 

Douglas, Isle of Man, map, 465, Ba. 

Dover, map, 465, Eg. 

Drama, The, development, 108-129 ; re- 
ligious rites, 109 ; miracle plays or 
mysteries, 110 ; pageants, 110 ; Ches- 
ter, York, Towneley, Coventry, 111; 
realistic portrayal of character. 111; 
typical characters. 111 ; moralities, 
112 ; Skelton's Necromancer, 113 ; in- 
terludes of John Heywood, 113-115; 
Four P:s, 113-115; comedy, 115; 
VdisXYs Ralph Roister Doister, 115; 
influence of Latin dramatists, 115, 116 ; 
tragedy, 116 ; Norton and Sackville's 
Gorboduc, 116 ; historical plays, 117, 
118 ; theatres, 119-121 ; companies, 
121 ; Shakespeare's predecessors, 122 ; 
Lyly, 122-125 ; Swan Theatre, interior 
of, 123 ; euphuism, 124, 125 ; Peele, 
Kyd, Greene, Nash, Lodge, 125, 126 ; 
Marlowe, 126-128 ; study, 128, 129 ; de- 
cline of drama, 176 ; the restoration, 
217, 218. 

Dramatic Literature of the Age of Eliza- 
beth, 386. 

Dramatic lAjrics, 436. 

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics, 436. 

Dramatists, lesser, 151. 

Drapier Letters, The, 244. 

Drayton, Michael, quoted, 130. 

Dream of Fair Women, A, 445. 

Dream of the Rood, of Cynewulf, 24, 
27. 

Druids, The, 19. 

Dryburgh Abbey, map, 465, Ca. 



470 



INDEX 



Dhyden, John, mentioned, 150, 200, 215, 
230, 246, 249, 250, 257, 258, 260, 304 ; 
influenced by Waller, 206 ; age of, 215, 
216 ; plays, 217, 218 ; account of, 217- 
220 ; Astrcea Redux, 217 ; Annus Mira- 
bilis, 218 ; Absalom and Achitophel, 
218; The Medal, 219; McFlecknoe, 
219 ; Religio Laid, 219 ; Hind and 
Panther, 219 ; laureate, 219 ; transla- 
tions and paraphrases, 220 ; minor 
poems, 220 ; authority, 220 ; rhymed 
couplet, 220 ; prose, 220 ; Lowell, 220 ; 
death, 221 ; influence, 222 ; edited by 
Scott, 337. 

Dryden, Macaulay's Essay on, 393. 

Dublin: Steele, 227; Swift, 238; Burke, 
301 ; Moore, 368 ; map, 465, Ab. 

Dulwich, map, 465, Dc. 

Dumfries, map, 465, Ca. 

DcNBAR, William, 86. 

Dunciad, The, 257. 

Dunwich, map, 465, Eb. 

Durham, burial-place of Bade, 29 ; map, 
465, Da. 

Earnley, home of Layamon, 47. 
Earthly Paradise, The, 459. 
Ecclefechan: Carlyle, 396; map, 465, 
Ca. 

Ecclesiastes, paraphrase of, 97. 
Ecclesiastical History, 21 ; account of 

Csedmon, 22, 23 ; Alfred's translation, 

34. 

Ecclesiastical Polity, Hooker's, 108. 

Ecclesiastical Sonnets, The, of Words- 
worth, 19. 

Edgeworth, Maria, account of, 413. 

Edinburgh : Hume, 299 ; Scott, 334 ; De 
Quincey, 383; Carlyle, 397; map, 7, 
Bb ; 465, Ca. 

Edinburgh Review, 387, 391, 393, 431, 
444. 

Edmonton : Keats, 365 ; Lamb, 375. 

Ednam, map, 465, Ca. 

Edward II., 126, 127. 

Edioard V., Life of, 89. 

Egbert, Archbishop of York, 31. 

Egdon Heath, map, 465, Cc. 

Eighteenth century. The, 222. 

Eikon Basilike, 187. 

Eikonoklastes, 186, 187. 

Elaine, 449. 

Elegy, Gray's, 304, 305. 

Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate 

Lady, Pope's, 254. 
Elene, of Cynewulf, 24, 25, 27 ; quoted, 

26. 

Elia, Essays of, 374, 375 ; Last Essays 
of, 375. 

Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans), men- 
tioned, 425, 431 ; account of, 426-428 ; 
early life, introduction to literature, 
426 ; novels, 427 ; philosophy, 428 ; 
rank, 428. 

Elizabethan age, The, 89, 216, 266, 304, 
369, 373, 374, 429 ; representative prose 
and verse of, 98-108 ; development of 
the drama, 108-129; Shakespeare and 



his successors, 129-168 ; spirit of the 
age, 132-134. 

Elizabethans, the last of, 170-178 ; char- 
acteristics of, 170 ; later, 179. 

Ellis, Havelock, 389. 

EUisland : Burns, 312. 

Eloise to Abelard, 254. 

Elstow : Buuyan, 200; map, 465, Db. 

Elvington, map, 465, Db. 

Ely : established, 20 ; map, 465, Eb. 

Emblems, Wither's, 202. 

Emma, 415. 

Endimion, Lyly's, 125. 

Endymion, 366, 368. 

Enfield : Keats, 365. 

England, Chaucer's, 60; society in Chau- 
cer's time, 60-63. 

England, Hume's History of, 299 ; Ma- 
caulay's, 393, 394, 395. 

England and the English, 6 ; principal 
divisions under the Teutons, 6; the 
nation and the language, 35-37 ; Eng- 
lish oflBcially recognized by the Nor- 
mans, 42, 74 ; Layamon's Brut, 49. 

English, applied to language and litera- 
ture, 36. 

English and Scottish Ballads, 88. 
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
352, 354. 

English Comic Writers, Hazlitt's, 386. 
Engl ish Humorists, The, 425. 
English Mail Coach, The, 384. 
English Opium-Eater, The, 377-386. 
English Poets, Hazlitt's, 386. 
English prose, Augustan age of, 222-248 ; 
characteristics, 223. 
Englishman, The, 235, 270. 
Enid, 449. 

Ensham, seat of ^Ifric, 34. 
Epic fragments, 28. 
Epicoene, 148, 
Epipsychidion, 361. 
Epistle of Eloise to Abelard, 254. 
Epistle of Karshish, An, 437. 
Epistles, Pope's, 247. 
Epitaph on Shakespeare, Milton's, 183. 
Epithalamion, Spenser's, 105. 
Erasmus, 83. 
Emley, map, 465, Cb. 
Essay, The, 223, 225. 
Essay on Criticism, The, 252, 253. 
Essay on Man, The, 259, 260. 
Essayists, the great, 389. 
Essays, Bacon's, 105, 171, 174, 176. 
Essays, Pope's, 249, 252, 259. 
Essays in Criticism (first and second se- 
ries), 410. 
Essays of Elia, 374, 375 ; Last, 375. 
Essenes, The, 383. 
Etbandum, map, 7, Bd. 
Ethics of the Bust, 406. 
Eton, map, 465, Dc. 
Ettrick, map, 465, Ca. 
Euganean Hills, Lines on the, 361. 
Eugene Aram, 415. 
Euphues, Lyly's, 100, 124, 125. 
Euphuism, 124, 125, 134. 
Euripides, 380. 



INDEX 



471 



Evans, Mary Ann (George Eliot), 426, 
•iSl. 

Eve of St. Agnes, The, 367. 

Eve of St. John, The, 337. 

Evelina, 291 . 

Evelyn, John, 215. 

Eversley, map, 465, Dc. 

Every Man in his Humour, 136, 147. 

Every Man out of his Humour, 148. 

Everyman, 112. 

Examiner, The, Leigh Hunt's, 366, 369. 
Examiner, The, Swift's, 242. 
Excursion, The, 320, 327 ; described, 
322. 

Exeter : seat of Bishop Leofric, 9, 26 ; 
Miles Coverdale, 90 ; map. 7, Bd ; 465, 
Cc. 

Exeter Booh, The, 9, 26, 27. 
Exodus, Caedmon's, 23. 
Expostulation and Reply, 320. 

Faerie Queene, The, mentioned, 101, 105, 
134; described, 104; study, 106, 107; 
influence upon Keats, 365. 

Falmouth, majj, 405, Be. 

Falstaff, in King Henry IV., 138, 144. 

Famous Victories of Henry V., The, 118. 

Fame Islands, map, 4G5, Da. 

Farringford : Tennyson, 450 ; map, 465, 
Dc. 

Fatal Sisters, The, 306. 
Fates of the Apostles, Cynewulf's, 4, 
27. 

Faustus, Tragical History of Doctor, 
126. 

Felix Holt, 427. 

Ferdinand, Count Fathom, 278. 

Field Place : Shelley, 357. 

Fielding, Heney, mentioned, 265, 278, 
414, 423 ; account of, 276-278 ; Joseph 
Andrews, 276 ; Tom Jones, 111 ; Ame- 
lia, 277. 

Fifteenth century, The, 82-88. 

Fight at Finnesburg, The, 28. 

Fight at Maldon, 28, 35. 

Fingal, Macpherson's, 307. 

Finn, in the epic, 28. 

Finnesburg, The Fight at, 28. 

FnzGEEALD, Edward, 459. 

Flamborough Head, map, 465, Da. 

Fie fro the Pres, 70. 

Fletcher, John, 150. 

Flodden Field, map, 465, Da. 

Fool, in King Lear, 144. 

Fool, in Twelfth Night, 144. 

Ford, John, 151. 

Foresters, The, 449. 

Fors Clavigera, 402, 405 ; definition, 405. 
Forster, John, 389. 
Fortunes of Nigel, The, 339. 
Foicr Elements, The, 112. 
Four Georges, The, 425. 
Four P.' s, Heywood's, 113-115. 
Fox, John, 108. 
Fra Lippo Lippi, 437. 
Fragments of Ancient Poeti-y, Macpher- 
son's, 307. 
Framley Parsonage, 429. 



Franceschini, Count Guido, in The Ring 

and the Book, 437, 438. 
Francis of Assisi, 110. 
Eraser's Magazine, 398, 431. 
Frederick the Great, Macaulay's^s^at/on, 

393 ; Carlyle's Life and Times of, 400. 
French influence, period of, 216, 222, 

240, 252. 

French Revolution, Carlyle's History of 

the, 400, 431. 
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Greene's, 

125. 

Friars, The, 55, 56 ; Wyclif's objections 

to, 56 ; in Chaucer's time, 62. 
Friend, The, 323. 
Frith of Forth, 2. 

Fuller, Thomas, quoted, 57, 149 ; ac- 
count of, 214, 215. 
Function of Criticism, The, 410. 

Gadshill, map, 465, Ec. 

Galahad, Sir, 449. 

Galatea, Lyly's, 125. 

Gareth and Lynette, 449. 

Garrick, David, 283, 289, 296. 

Gaskell, Elizabeth, 425. 

Gay, John, 247, 257 ; account of, 264. 

Gebir, 388. 

Genesis, Csedmou's, 23. 
Genesis and Exodus, Caedmon's, 23. 
Genesis and Exodus, the later, 54. 
Geneva Bible, The, 91. 
Genius and Character of Hogarth, The, 
374. 

Gentleman's Blagazine, The, 284. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 48, 50. 
Geographical names, 36. 
George-a-Greene, Greene's, 125, 126. 
Germans, The, 3, 4, 6. 
Gesta Romanorum. 46. 
Giaour, The, 338, 353, 354. 
Gibbon, Edward, mentioned, 2, 223, 301; 

account of, 299-301. 
GiifiVs Love Story, 3fr., 426. 
Glasgow, map, 465, Ba. 
Glastonbury, map, 465, Cc. 
Gleeman, The, 8, 9, 18, 27, 35, 44. 
Globe Theatre, The, 119, 122, 139. 
Gloucester, map, 7, Bd; 465, Cc. 
Gnomic Verses, quoted, 27. 
God moves in a mysterious way, 308. 
Godwin, Mary (Mrs. Shelley), 360. 
Godwin, William, 334, 360. 
Goethe, 334, 337. 

Goetz von Berlichingen, translated by 
Scott, 337. 

Golden Targe, The, 86. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, mentioned, 238, 279, 
280, 289, 306, 395 ; account of, 292-299; 
school days, 293; benevolence, 293; ir- 
responsibility, 294 ; wanderings, 294, 
295; Grub Street, 295; works, 296; 
death, 297; study, 297-299. 

Good Natured 3Ian, The, 296. 

Goodrich Castle, map, 465, Cc. 

Gorboduc, 116, 357. 

Gorboduc, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 
History, 48. 



472 



INDEX 



Goring Castle : Shelley, 357. 

Gotliic romance, 333, 334. 

GowER, John, mentioned, 54, 69, 86 ; ac- 
count of, 58-59 ; printed by Caxton, 
84. 

Grace Abounding, 210. 

Grail, The Holy, 449. 

Grasmere : Wordsworth, 321 ; De Quin- 

cey, 381 ; map, 465, Ca. 
Grave, The, Blair's, 264, 304. 
Gray, Thomas, mentioned, 220, 307, 316, 

333; account of, 304-306. 
Great Bible, The, 91. 
Great Expectations, 420. 
Great Grimsby, map, 465, Db. 
Great Hoggarty Diamond, The, 423. 
Great Marlow, map, 465, Dc. 
Great Place, Of, Bacon's, 173. 
Great Yarmouth, map, 465, Eb. 
Greek Studies, Pater's, 412. 
Greene, Robert, 125, 126, 134 ; attack 

of Shakespeare, 137. 
Greenock, map, 465, Ba. 
Greenwich, map, 465, Dc. 
Gregory, Pope, his Pastoral Care, 32, 

34. 

Grendel, in Beowulf, 11-14, 16; Gren- 

del's mother, 12-14. 
Gretna Green, map, 465, Ca. 
Groatsworth of Wit, Greene's, 137. 
Grocyn, William, 83. 
Guernsey, map, 465, Cd. 
Guido Franceschini, Count, in The Ring 

and the Book, 437, 438. 
Guildford, map, 465, Dc. 
Guinevere, 448, 449. 
Gulliver's Travels, '2M-'2A1, 257. 
Gutenberg, John, 83. 
Guy Mannering, 338. 
Guy of Warwick, 44. 

Halifax, map, 465, Db. 
Hall, Edward, 117, 143. 
Hallam, Arthur Henry, 447. 
Hallelujah, Wither' s, 202. 
Hamlet, 144, 146. 
Hampole, map, 405, Db. 
Hampole, Richard Rolle of, 54. 
JTandlyng Synne, 54. 
Hard Cash, 429. 
Hard Times, 420. 
Hardicanute, 335. 

Harold, Bulwer's, 415; Tennyson's, 449. 
Harrow, map, 465, Dc. 
Hart-Leap Well, 326. 
Hartlepool, map, 465, Da. 
Harwich, map, 465, Ec. 
Hastings, Warren, Macaulay's Essay on, 
393. 

Hastings, map, 7, Dd ; 465, Ec. 

Haunted and the Haunters, The, 416. 

Havelock the Dane, 45. 

Hawarden, map, 465, Cb. 

Eawes, Stephen, 87. 

Hawkeshead: Wordsworth, 317; map, 

465, Ca. 
Haworth, map, 465, Db. 
Hawthornden, wop, 465, Ca. 



Hazlitt, WILLLA.M, quoted, 254 ; men- 
tioned, 366 ; account of, 386. 

Healfdene, in Beowulf, 8. 

Heart of Midlothian, The, 338. 

Helvellyn, Mount, map, 465, Ca. 

Hengest, 4, 6, 19. 

Henry Esmond, 416. 424, 425. 

Heorot, the hall in Beowulf, 11, 12, 16. 

Herbert, George, 200, 202. 

Hereford, map, 465, Cb. 

Hereward the Saxon, 44, 

Hereivard the Wake, 429. 

Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in 
History, 399. 

Heroic couplet, 249. 

Herrick, Robert, 205, 206. 

Hertford, map, 465, Dc. 

Hesperides, Herrick's, 206. 

Hetty, in Adam Bede, 426. 

Heywood, John, 113-115. 

Heywood, Thomas, 151. 

Hick Scorner, 112. 

High is our Calling, Friend (To B. R. 

Haydon), 324. 
Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 20 ; Caedmon, 

21, 22. 

Hind and the Panther, The, 219. 

Hipswell, map, 7, Cb ; 465, Da. 

His Being Arrived at the Age of Twenty- 

three. On, Milton's, 183. 
Historia Ecclesiastica, 21 ; Alfred's 

translation, 34 ; account of Caedmon, 

22, 23. 

Historia Regum Britannice, 48. 

Historical plays, 117, 118. 

History of England, Hume's, 299; Ma- 
caulay's, 393, 394, 395. 

History of the Caliph Vathek, 333. 

History of the Kings of Britain, 48. 

History of the Scottish Reformation, 
Knox's, 108. 

History of the World, Raleigh's, 101. 

Hitchin, map, 465, Dc. 

HoBBEs, Thomas, 215. 

Hogarth, Genius and Character of, 374. 

Hogg, James, 384. 

Holinshed, Raphael, 117, 143. 

Holy City, The, Bunyan's, 210. 

Holy Dying, Fuller's, 214. 

Holy Grail, The, 47, 449. 

Holy Island, map, 465, Bb. 

Holy Living, Fuller's, 214. 

Holy War, The, 207 , 210. 

Holyhead, map, 465, Bb. 

Homer: Chapman's, 366 ; Dryden's, 220 ; 
Pope's, 255, 256 ; influence upon Pope, 
250 ; Keats, 366 ; Ruskin, 403 ; Brown- 
ing, 433 ; mentioned, 437. 

Homer, On First Looking into Chap- 
man''s, 366. 

Hooker, Richard, 108. 

Horace, read by Prior, 264. 

Horsa, 4, 6, 19. 

Horsham, map, 465, Dc. 

Horton : Milton, 183 ; map, 465, Dc. 

Hours of Idleness, 352. 

Hous of Fame, The, 68, 69. 

House, Browning's, 141. 



INDEX 



473 



Rouse of Life, The, 459. 
House of the Wolfings, The, 459. 
How to Use the Court. 95. 
Howard, Hensy, Earl of Surrey, men- 
tioued, 89, 94, 9S, 99; account of, 97, 98. 
Hrothgar, in Beowulf, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 29. 
Hudibras, 207, 221. 
Hull, map, 4(35, Db. 

Human Understanding, Locke's Essay 

Concerning, 216. 
Humber River, map. 465, Dc. 
Hume, David, mentioned, 2, 223, 301; 

account of, 299. 
Humphrey Clinker, 278. 
Hunt, Holman, 404. 

HtTNT, Leigh, mentioned, 361, 362, 366, 

368, 399 ; account of, 369. 
Huntingdon, map, 465, Db. 
Hursley, map, 465, Dc. 
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 442. 
Hygelac, in Beowulf, 11, 13, 14. 
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 358. 
Hymns and Songs of the Church, With- 

er's, 202. 
Hypatia, 416, 429. 
Hyperion, 367. 

lago, in Othello, 144. 
Idiot Boy, The, 320. 
Idler, The, 281, 285. 
Idylls of the King, 449. 
// Filostrato, 68. 
H Penseroso, 184, 192,305. 
Iliad, Pope's, 255. 

Imaginary Conversations, 38S, 389, 411. 
Imaginary Portraits, 411. 
In Memoriam, 447, 448. 
Indian Emperor, Dryden's, 218. 
Indian Penal Code and Code of Crimi- 
nal Procedure, Macaulay's, 392. 
Inductive system, The, 174. 
Interludes, 113-115. 
Ipswich, map, 465, Eb. 
Irish Melodies, 368. 
Irish Sketch Book, The, 423. 
Irish tales. Miss Edgeworth's, 413. 
Is there for Honest Poverty, 314. 
Isabella, 367. 

Isle of Wight : Tennyson, 450. 

It is Never too Late to Mend, 429. 

Italian romance, 266. 

Italy, Rogers's, 403. 

Ivanhoe, 336, 339 ; study of, 341-349. 

Jack Wilton, Life of, Nash's, 126. 
James I. of Scotland, 86 ; mentioned, 
351. 

James Lee''s Wife, 437. 

Jane Eyre, 425. 

Janefs Repentance, 426. 

Jarrow : established, 20 ; Bede, 30; rav- 
aged by the Danes, 31 ; map, 7, Cb ; 
465, Da. 

Jeames'' Diary, 423. 

Jeffrey, Francis, mentioned, 352, 388, 

392 ; accoimt of, 387. 
Jersey, map, 465, Cd. 
Jew of Malta, The, 126. 



Joan of Arc, De Quincey's, 384 ; South- 

ey's, 332. 
John Gilpin, 308. 
John Woodvil, 373. 

Johnson, Bos well's Life of, 288 ; Macau- 
lay's Essay on, 393. 

JoKNSON, Samuel, mentioned, 223, 261, 
292,293,296, 299, 301, 306, 395, 399; 
quoted, 270 ; account of, 281-292; child- 
hood, 281 ; early struggles, 282 ; mar- 
riage, 282 ; hack-writer, 283 ; parlia- 
mentary reports, 284 ; Rambler, Idler, 
285; The Dictionary, 286; Rasselas, 
287 ; Boswell, 287, 288 ; the Club, 289 ; 
Lives of the Poets, 289 ; death, 290 ; 
personality, 290 ; study, 291. 

Jonathan Wild, Fielding's, 423. 

JoNsoN, Ben. mentioned, 105, 108, 130, 
134, 136, 142, 170, 179 ; account of, 147- 
150 ; education, 147 ; masques, 148 ; 
Jonson and Shakespeare, 148 ; dedif^a- 
tion to First Folio, 149 ; Timber, 149, 
150 ; laureate, 150 ; death, 150. 

Joseph Andrews, 276. 

Jourjial of the Plague Year, The, 271. 

Journal to Stella, The, 242, 243. 

Journey to the Hebrides, 290. 

Judith, 28, 29. 

Jules, in Pippa Passes, 436. 

Juliet, in Ro7neo and Juliet, 144. 

Jutes, The, 4, 5. 

Juvenal, translated by Dryden, 220 ; 
imitated by Johnson, 284. 

Kabale und Liebe, Schiller's, 334. 

Kant, Immanuel, 324. 

Keats, John, mentioned, 361, 362, 369, 
387, 431, 433, 460 ; account of, 365- 
369; inspiration, 365 ; at school, 366; 
surgeon's apprentice, 366 ; Endymion, 
366 ; third volume, 367 ; death, 367 ; 
burden of Keats, 368. 

Kenilworth, 339. 

Kenilworth : festivities, 117 ; Shake- 
speare, 131 ; map, 465, Db. 

Kent, occupied by the Jutes, 4 ; ab- 
sorbed by the Saxons, 6. 

Keswick : 'Coleridge, 321; Southey, 332; 
Shelley, 359 ; map, 465, Ca. 

Kidnapped, 430. 

Kilcolman Castle, Spenser's home in 
Ireland, 103. 

Kilmarnock, map, 465, Ba. 

King Arthur, stories of, 44, 47 ; in Geof- 
frey of Monmouth, 48 ; Malory's 
Morte Darthvr, 84 ; Faerie Queene, 
104 ; Milton, 185 ; Tennyson, 449. 

King David and Fair Bethscba, Peele's 
Love of, 125. 

King Henry VII., Bacon's History of, 
174. 

King Henry VIII., 150, 
King Horn, 45, 46. 
King James Bible, The, 91. 
King John, Bnle's, 118. 
King John, The Troublesome Reign of, 
118. 

Kings Lynn, map, 405, Eb. 



474 



INDEX 



Kings'' Treasuries, 406. 

KiNGSLEY, Charles, 429. 

Kiiityre, map, 465, Ba. 

Kirkby Wiske, map, 465, Da. 

Kirkcudbright, majj, 4G5, Ba. 

KnighVs Tale, Chaucer's, quoted, 73 ; 

sug'gestioiis for study, 79-81. 
Knox, John, 108, 399. 
Kmitsford, map, 465, Cb. 
KublaKhan, 323. 
Kyd, Thomas, 126. 
Kynge^s Quhair, The, 86. 

Lactantius, 24. 

Lady of Lyons, The, 416. 

LacJyof Shalott, The, 445, 449. 

Lady of the Lake, The, 337. 

Lady's Magazine, The, 295. 

Lake Country, The : Wordsworth, 317; 

De Quincey, 381. 
Lake poets. The, 321, 332, 387. 
Laleham : Arnold, 411. 
Lalla Rookh, 368. 
L' Allegro, 184, 192. 

Lamb, Charles, mentioned, 319, 366, 369, 
383, 431 ; quoted (Walton), 215 ; ac- 
count of, 370-376; childhood, 370; an 
office clerk, 371 ; the tragedy, 371; bro- 
ther and sister, 372 ; literary career, 
372 ; Tales from Shakespeare, 373 ; 
Essays of Elia, 374 ; personality, 375 ; 
death, 375 ; study, 375, 376. 

Lamb. Mart, 370-373, 375. 

Lamb's Poems, 371, 372. 

Lamia, 367. 

Lancaster, a Roman town, 3; 7wap,465,Ca. 
Lancelot Gobbo, in Merchant of Venice, 
144. 

Land of the Glittering Plain, The, 459. 

Landor, Walter Savage, 388, 389, 411. 

Landport, map, 465, Dc. 

Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 43. 

Langland, William, mentioned, 54, 62, 
69, 74, 396 ; account of, 55, 56 ; Piers 
the Plowman's Vision, 56 ; Do Wei, Do 
Bet, Do Best, 56; versification, 56. 

Langtoft, Peter, 49. 

Language, the English, 35-37 ; the Ro- 
man element, 36 ; the Cymric element, 
36; the Latin element, 37; the Danish 
element, 37 ; officially recognized by 
the Normans, 42, 74. 

LaodamAa, 322, 327. 

Lara, 353. 

Laracor : Swift, 239. 
Last Chronicle of Bar set. The, 429. 
Last Days of Pompeii, The, 415, 431. 
Last of the Barons, The, 415. 
Last Tournament, The, 449. 
Latimer, John, 108. 

Latin element in English : place-names, 
3; derivatives, street, port, wall, villa, 
fosse, 3, 36 ; ecclesiastical terms, 37. 

Latter-Day Pamphlets, 400. 

Launce, in Two Gentlemen of Verona, 144. 

Launceston, map, 465, Be. 

Laureate poets: Skelton, 87; Jonson, 
150; Dryden, 219 ; Southey, 332. 



Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 337, 353, 
391. 

Layamon, 47-49. 

Lays of Ancient Rome, 393. 
Le Roman de la Rose, 66. 
Le Sage, 278. 

Lear, in Geoifrey of Monmouth, 48. 

Lear, in King Lear, 144. 

Ledger, The Public, 295. 

Leeds, map, 465, Db. 

Legend of Montrose, The, 338. 

Legende of Goode Women, 70; quoted, 73. 

Leicester, map, 465, Db. 

Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, 9, 26, 27. 

Leonora, 413. 

Letter from Italy, Addison's, 226. 

Letter on a Regicide Peace, 302. 

Letter to Lord Chesterfield, Johnson's, 

286; 287. 
Leviathan, Hobbes's, 215. 
Lewes, George Henry, 426. 
Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 334, 353. 
Lichfield : Johnson, 281 ; map, 465, Db. 
Life and Death of Jason, The, 459. 
Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, 391, 
Life of Byron, Moore's, 369. 
Lilia, in Tlie Princess, 445. 
Lincoln, a Roman town, 3 ; map, 7, Cc ; 

465, Db. 

Lincolnshire, Danish place-names, 37. 
Lindisfarne, seat of Bishop Aidan, 20 ; 

map, 465, Da. 
Lines on the Euganean Hills, 361. 
Lines Written in Dejection, 361. 
Lissoy : Goldsmith, 293. 
Literature, definition, 1. 
Literature and Dogma, 411. 
Little Dorrit, 417 , 420. 
Little Nell, in Old Curiosity Shop, 419, 

422. 

Littlemore, map, 465, Dc. 
Liverpool, map, 4G5, Cb. 
lAves of the English Poets,281, 289. 
Locke, John, 216. 

LocKHART, John G., mentioned, 341, 

36G, 445 ; account of, 387. 
Locrine, 48. 

Lodge, Thomas, 126, 266. 

London : a Roman'townTS ; in Chaucer's 

time, 63 ; birthplace of Chaucer, 64 ; 

Caxton's press, 84 ; Sir Thomas More, 

89 ; Spenser, 102 ; the drama. 130 ; Ben 

Jonson, 147 ; Bacon, 171 ; Milton, 182 ; 

Pope, 250; Defoe, 268; Byron, 350; 

Keats, 365 ; Lamb, 370 ; Ruskin, 402 ; 

Dickens, 417, 418, 421 ; Browning, 432 ; 

map, 7, Cd ; 465, Dc. 
London, Johnson's, 284. 
London Gazette, The, 228. 
London Magazine, The, 374, 382, 397. 
Longfellow, H. W., sonnet on Chaucer, 

60. 

Lord of the Isles, The, 338. 
Lothair, 416. 

Lotos-Eaters, The, 444, 445. 
Louth : Tennyson, 444 ; map, 465, Db. 
Lovelace, Richard, 203; quoted, 204, 
205. 



INDEX 



475' 



Lovers 3feime, 406. 
Lowell, J. R., quoted (Dryden), 220. 
Lowestoft, map, 465, Eb. 
Lucasta, Lovelace's, 204, 205. 
Lucy Gray, 320, 326. 
Ludlow, 7nup, 465, Cb. 
Liiigi, in Pippa Passes, 436. 
Lusty Juventus, 112. 

Lutterworth, home of Wyclif, 57; map, 
465, Db. 

Lycidas, 103, 184, 195. 

Lydgate, John, 84, 86. 

Ltlt, John, account of, 122-125 ; men- 
tioned, 266. 

Lyrical Ballads, The, 320, 321, 388. 

Macaulay, T. B., mentioned, 2, 302, 
410, 431; quoted (Bunyan), 211, 214; 
(Steele), 228; (Temple), 238; (John- 
son), 281, 283, 288, 289 ; account of, 
390-396 : childhood, precocity, 391 ; 
Cambridge, 391; public life, India, pol- 
itics, 392; Essays, 393 ; History, 393, 
394, 395 ; death, 395 ; study, 395. 

Macaulay, Life and Letters of Lord, 391, 
394. 

Macbeth, 127, 144. 
MacFlecknoe, 219, 257, 258. 
3Iachiavelli, Macaulay's Essay on, 393. 
3fackery End, in Hertfordshire, 372, 374. 
Macpheeson, James, 307. 
Iladoc, 332. 

MaitPs Tragedy, Beaumont and Fletch- 
er's, 150. 

Maidstone, map, 465, Ec. 

Maldon, map, 465, Ec. 

Maldon, Fight at, 28, 35. 

Malmesbury, map, 465, Cc. 

Maloey, Thomas, 84. 

Malvern Hills, The, home of Langland, 
55; map, 465, Cb. 

Man, Isle of, map, 465, Ba. 

Manchester : De Quincey, 377 ; viap , 465, 
Cb. 

Mandeville, Sie John, 49-51; facsimile 

of manuscript, 51. 
Manfred, 354. 

Manning, Robert, of Brunne, 40; Hand- 

lyng Synne, 54. 
Mansfield Park, 415. 
Margaret, 320, 326. 
Marius the Epicurean, 411. 
Marlow : Shelley, 360. 
Mablowe, Christopher, mentioned, 108, 

134, 136, 137, 148; account of, 126-128; 

plays, 126; influence on Shakespeare, 

126; his spirit and his "mighty line," 

127, 128. 
Marmion, 336, 337, 353. 
Marriage of Wit and Wisdom, The, 112. 
Maeston, John, 151. 
Martin Chuzzletvit, 420. 
Mabvell, Andrew, 202. 
Masques, 125, 147, 148. 
Massinger, Philip, 151. 
Master of Ballantrae, The, 430. 
M\turity of the novel, The, 412. 
Maud, 448. 



Medal, The, 219. 

Melema, Tito, in Romola, 427. 

Melrose Abbey, map, 465, Ca. 

3Iemoirs of a Cavalier, 271. 

Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, 247. 

Memorials of Italian Tour, Words- 
worth's, 431. 

Men and Women, 437. 

Mercia, kingdom of the Angles, 6. 

Meees, Francis, 139, 147. 

Merry Plays, Heywood's, 113. 

Metaphysical poets. The, 200-206. 

Micawber, Mr., in David Copperfield, 
418. 

Michael, 326. 

3Iidas, Lyly's, 125. 

aiiddle English Period, 37, 42 ; develop- 
ment of Middle English literature, 43- 
54. 

Middlemarch, 427. 

Middleton, Thomas, 151. 

Midsummer NighVs Dream, 105. 

Milford Haven, map, 465, Be. 

Mill, John Stuart, 426. 

Mill on the Floss, The, 427. 

Millais, Sir John, 404. 

Miller's Daughter, The, 444. 

MilBton : Addison, 225 ; majp. 465, Dc. 

Milton, John, mentioned,'' Ivt, 103, 170, 
179, ISO, 199, 201, 202, 20G, 210, 215, 
305, 449 ; account of, 182-199 ; educa- 
tion, 182 ; blindness, 182, 187, 191 ; 
Cambridge, 182; Horton, 183; minor 
poems, 183, 184; Lycidas, ISl ; conti- 
nental travel, 184; London, 185; com- 
monwealth, 185 ; prose works, 186 ; 
Latin Secretary, 186 ; restoration, 187 ; 
marriage, 188 ; Paradise Lost, 188-191 ; 
Paradise Regained, 191 ; Saynson Ago- 
nistes, 191 ; last years, 191 ; death, 192 ; 
study, 192-199; L' Allegro, II Pense- 
roso, 192 ; Lycidas, 195 ; bibliography, 
199. 

3Iilton, Macaulay's Essay on, 392, 393. 
Minstrel, the Norman, 44. 
3IinstreLsy of the Scottisli Border, 88. 
Miracle plays. The, 110-112, 117 ; at 

Coventry in Shakespeare's boyhood, 

131. 

Mistress, The, Cowley's, 203. 
3Iod€rn Painters, 404. 
3Ioll Flanders, 212. 
3Ionk, The, 334. 

Monkwearmouth, map, 7, Cb ; 465, Da. 

Monmouth, GeolTrey of, 48. 

Monmouth, Harry (Prince Hal), in King 

Henry IV., 144. 
Monmouth, map, 465, Cc. 
Montgomery, majy, 465, Cb. 
3fonthly Review, The, 295. 
Moor Park : Temple, Swift, 238 ; map, 

465, Dc. 

MooRE, Thomas, account of, 368, 369. 
3foral Essays, Pope's, 259. 
3foral Ode, The, 52. ^ 
Moralities, 112, 113, 117, 118. >\ 
Morals in the age of Anne, 224. 
More, Hannah, 390. 



476 



INDEX 



More, Sir Thomas, mentioned, 83, 89, 

90, 244 ; account of, 89, 90. 
Morning of ChrisVs Nativity, Milton's 

Ode on the, 183. 
Morris, Dinah, in Adam Bede, 426. 
Morris, William, mentioned, 390, 404 ; 

account of, 459, 460. 
Morte Darthur, Malory's, 84. 
3Iorte d'' Arthur, Tennyson's, 449. 
Mossgiel: Burns, 311. 
Munera Pulveris, 405. 
Murder as One of the Fine Arts, 383. 
My Novel, 416. 
Mysteries, The, 110-112, 117. 
3I>jsteriesof Udolpho, The, 334, 414. 
Mystery of Edioin Drood, The, 420. 
Mythology, Teutonic, 4, 5. 

Napoleon, Hazlitt's Life of, 386. 
Napoleon, in Carlyle's Heroes, 399. 
Napoleon, Lockhart'sZ/i/e of, 387; Scott's 

Life of, 340. 
Naseby, map, 465, Db. 
Nash, Thomas, 126, 266. 
Necessity of Atheism, The, 359. 
Necromancer, Skelton's, 113. 
Nelson, Life of, Southey's, 332. 
Nether Stowey : Coleridge, 319 ; map, 

465, Cc. 
New Atlantis, The, 174. 
New Forest, map, 7, Cd ; 465, Dc. 
New learning, The, 83, 89, 92, 102. 
New Radnor, map, 465, Cb. 
New poetry. The, 316. 
Newark, map, 465, Db. 
Newcastle, map, 465, Da. 
Newcome, Colonel, in The Newcomes, 

424. 

Newspaper, the first, 228. 

Newstead Abbey : Byron, 351 ; map, 
405, Db. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 216. 

Newton, map, 465, Cc. 

Nicholas Nickleby, 417, 420, 422. 

Night Thoughts, Young's, 204. 

Nineteenth century. The, 316. 

Noble Numbers, Herrick's, 206. 

Nodes Ambrosiance, 387. 

Norfolk, settled by Angles, 5. 

Normans, The, 37; the race, 41-43 ; Nor- 
man-French, 42 ; literature, 43 ; trou- 
veres, 43 ; romances, 44 ; Layamon's 
Brut, 49 ; ecclesiastical literature, 54 ; 
mingling with the English, 54; the 
friars, 55. 

Norman-French, The, 42. 

" North, Christopher," 381, 387, 444. 

Northallerton, map, 465, Da. 

Northanger Abbey, 414. 

Northern Antiquities, Percy's, 307. 

Northmen, The, 3, 6, 12, 13, 41 ; reli- 
gion, 4, 5. 

Northumberland, occupied by Angles, 
5, 6 ; home of Beowulf, 10 ; home of 
Cynewulf, 23 ; Bede, 29. 

Northumbria, Christianized, 19 ; harried 
by the Danes, 31 ; literature, 36. 

Norton, Thomas, 116. 



Norwich, map, 465, Eb. 
Nottingham, 7uap, 4G5, Db. 
Novel, Development of the English, 413. 
Novel, rise of the English, 265-281. 
Novel, The, 273, 274. 
Novel, the first English {Pamela), 274. 
Novel, the maturity of the, 412. 
Nuneaton, map, 465, Db. 
Nun's PriesVs Tale, Chaucer's, sugges- 
tions for study, 81. 
Nutbrowne Maid, The, 88. 
Nutting, 320. 

O Nightingale ! thou surely art, 325. 

Objections to Friars, 57. 

OccLEVE, Thomas, 86. 

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton Col- 
lege, 305. 

Ode on a Grecian Urn, 367, 368. 

Ode on Melancholy, 367. 

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welling- 
ton, 448. 

Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, 
322. 

Ode to Dejection, 323. 
Ode to Duty, 321, 327. 
Ode to Memory, 443. 
Ode to the West Wind, 361. 
Odes, Collins's, 304. 
Odyssey, Pope's, 256. 
CEnone, 441. 

Of the Courtier'' s Life, 95. 
Of the Mean and Sure Estate, 95. 
Oh ! for a closer walk with God, 308. 
Old Benchers of the Middle Temple, The, 
370. 

Old Cumberland Beggar, The, 320. 
Old Curiosity Shop, The, 420. 
Old Mortality, 338. 
Old Whig, The, 234. 
Oliver Twist, 417, 420, 422, 431. 
Olney : Cowper, 308 ; map, 465, Db. 
Olney Collection of Hymns, The, 308. 
Omar Khayyam, 459. 
On the Receipt of my Mother'' s Picture, 
309. 

On the Sonnet, 96. 
One Word 3fore, 437. 
Ophelia, in Hamlet, 144. 
Oriental Eclogues, 304. 
Origin of Species, The, 443. 
Orlando Furioso, Greene's, 125. 
Orley Farm, 429. 
Orm', 53. 

Ormulum, The, 53. 

Orosius, Alfred's translation, 33. 

Osborne, George, in Vanity Fair, 424. 

Ossianic fragments, 307. 

Othello, 144, 146. 

Otterv. St. Mary's : Coleridge, 319 ; map, 
465^ Cc. 

Ottima, in Pippa Passes, 436. 

Our Mutual Frieoid, 420. 

Ovid, translated by Gavin Douglas, 86 
used by Shakespeare, 143; translated 
by Dryden, 220 ; read by Pope, 250. 

Owl, The, 444. 

Oxford, map, 7, Cd ; 465, Dc. 



INDEX 



477 



Oxford Gazette, The, 228. 
Oxford in the Vacation, 374. 

Pageants, 110. 
Palace of Art, The, 445. 
Palace of Honor, The, 86. 
Palamon and Arcife, Dryden's, 220. 
Palladis Tamia, Meres's, 139. 
Pallas : Goldsmith, 293. 
Pamela, 274, 275, 276. 
Pandosto, Greene's, 126. 
Panegyric, upon Cromwell, Waller's, 
206. 

Pantisocracy, 319, 332. 

Paracelsus, 432, 434, 435. 

Paradise Lost, 184, 185, 391, 437; de- 
scribed, 188-191 ; facsimile of first 
page, 189 ; Paradise Regained, 191. 

Parallelism in Anglo-Saxon verse, 18. 

Paris Sketch Book, The, 423. 

Paris ina, 353. 

Parlement of Fmdes, 68 ; quoted, 73. 

Parliamentary reports, Johnson's, 284. 

Parnell, Thomas, 257. 

Parties in the age of Anne, 224. 

Passing of Arthur, The, 449. 

Past and Present, 400. 

Pastime of Pleasure, The, 87. 

Paston, map, 465, Eb. 

Pastoral Care, Pope Gregory's, 32, 34. 

Pastoralis Cura, 33, 34. 

Pastorals, Pope's, 103, 251. 

Patee, Walter, 411, 412. 

Patient Grissel, 88. 

Patronage, 413. 

Pattison, Mark, 255. 

Paul Clifford, 415. 

Paidine, 434, 

Paulinas, the missionary, 19. 
Peckham : Browning, 433. 
Peele, George, 125, 126, 134, 137. 
Peg Woffington, 429. 
Pelham, 415. 
Pelleas and Ettarre, 449. 
Pembroke, map, 465, Be. 
Pendennis, 424. 

Penitential Psalms, paraphrase of, 95. 
Penshurst, Sidney's birthplace. 98; map, 

4C5, Ec. 
Penzance, map, 465, Bo. 
Pepts, Samuel, 215. 

Percy, Harry (Hotspur), in King Henry 

IV., 144, 146. 
Percy, Thomas (Bishop), mentioned, 88, 

295 ; account of, 307. 
Perdita, in The Winter's Tale, 144. 
Peregrine Pickle, 278. 
Periodical literature, 228. 
Periods of European Culture, Carlyle's, 

399. 

Persitts, translated by Dryden, 220. 
Persuasion, 415. 
Peter Bell, 320. 

Peterborough, established, 20 ; map, 7, 

Cc; 465, Db. 
Petersfield, map, 465, Dc. 
Petrarch, Francis, 66, 82, 97. 
Peveusey, map, 465, Ec. 



Peveril of the Peak, 339. 
Phene, in Pippa Passes, 436. 
Philaster, Beaumont and Fletcher's, 150. 
Philosophical Inquiry into our Ideas of 

the Sublime and Beautiful, Burke's, 

301. 

Phoenix, The, of Cynewulf, 24, 27; 
quoted, 20, 21. 

Picaresque novel, The, 267. 

Pickwick Papers, 420, 421, 431. 

Pictures from Italy, 420. 

Piers the Plotcman''s Vision, 55, 56. 

PUgrim's Progress, The, 210, 244, 267, 
270, 391, 403 ; described, 211-214 ; fac- 
simile of title-page, 213; place in fic- 
ti 3n, 267. 

Pindarique Odes, Cowley's, 203. 

Pip, in Great Expectations, 422. 

Pippa Passes, 435, 436. 

Pirate, The, 339. 

Pitt, Macaulay's Essay on, 393. 

Place-names: Latin, 3, 36; Celtic, 36; 
Danish, 37. 

P^am Man's Pathway, The, 208. 

Pluto and Plaionism, 412. 

Plautus, 115, 139, 143. 

Plebeian, The, 234, 235. 

Plutarch, 143 ; influence on Johnson, 
282. 

Plymouth, map, 465, Be. 
Poema Morale, 52. 

Poems by Alfred Tennyson (1832), 444. 

Poems by Two Brother 's, 443. 

Poet, The, 444. 

PoeVs Mind, The, 444. 

Poet-laureate: Skeltou, 87; Jonson, 150; 
Dryden, 219 ; Southey, 332 ; Words- 
worth, 322; Tennyson, 446. 

Poetry, Stedman's definition, 327. 

Poetry of architecture. The, 431. 

Politics, participation in, 223. 

Pope, Alexander, mentioned, 230, 234, 
246, 247, 2(34, 265, 281, 284, 289, 293, 
304, 306, 352, 403, 432; account of, 
249 ; his art and its limitations, 249 ; 
boyhood, 250; Pastorals, 251; Wind- 
sor Forest, 251, 262 ; Essay on Criti- 
cism, '2h2, 253; Rape of the Lock, 2,53, 
262 ; Eloise to Abelard, 254 ; Homer, 
255; Twickenham, 256 ; Dvnciad,'2bl , 
258 ; 3Ioral Essays, 259, 260 ; minor 
poems, 260 ; death, 261 ; appreciation, 
261 ; study, 261-264 ; school of, 264. 

Portia, in Julius Ccesar, 144. 

Portia (of Belmont), in Merchant of 
Venice, 144. 

Portsmouth : Dickens, 418 ; map, 465, 
Dc. 

Poyser, Mrs., in Adam Bfde, 427. 
Practice of Piety, The, 208. 
Praeterita, 403, 406. 

Praise of Chimney-Siceppers, The, 374. 
Prelude, The, 317, 318. .320, .322, 327. 
Pre-Raphaelites, The, 404, 459. 
Pre-Raphaejitism , 404. 
Present State of Politr Learning in Eu- 
rope, Goldsmith's, 'J95. 
Prickle of Conscience, 54. 



478 



INDEX 



Pride and Prejudice, 414, 415. 

Princess, The, 445, 446. 

Principia, Newton's, 216. 

Printing, invention of, 83. 

Prior, Matthew, 239; account of, 264. 

Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, Mil- 
ton's, 186, 187. 

Process of the Seven Sages, 46. 

Progress of Poesy, The, 306. 

Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 71 , 73 ; 
suggestions for study, 76-79. 

Prometheus Unbound, ^&\. 

Prose, Anglo-Saxon, 29-35. 

Prose, Augustan age of English, 222-248; 
characteristics, 223. 

Prose composition later than verse, 29. 

Proserpina, 406. 

Prospice, 437. 

Prothalamion, Spenser's, 105. 

Psalms, paraphrase of, 97. 

Psalms of David, Witlier's, 202. 

Public Intelligencer, The, 228. 

Punch, 423. 

Puritan England, 108. 

Puritan movement. The, 179-199. 

Puritan types, 180. 

Puritanism, rise of, 179 ; fall of, 181. 

Put Yourself in his Place, 429. 

Putney : Gibbon, 299. 

QuARLES, Francis, 201. 

Quarterly Revieiv, 367, 387, 445. 

Queen Mab, 359, 361. 

Queen 3Iary, 449. 

Queen of the Air, The, 406. 

Queens'* Gardens, 406. 

Quentin Durward, 339. 

Quilp, in Old Curiosity Shop, 421. 

Rabbi Ben Ezra, 437. 

Racedown : Wordsworth, 319. 

Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 333, 334, 353. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, account of, 100, 
101 ; mentioned, 103, 104, 108. 

Ralph Roister Doister, 115. 

Rambler, The, 281, 285. 

Rape of Lucrece, The, 138. 

Rape of the Lock, The, 253. 

Rasselas, 281, 287. 

Reade, Charles, 429. 

Reader, The, 235. 

Reading, map, 405, Dc. 

Realism : Defoe's, 271; Richardson's, 
275 ; Fielding's, 277. 

Realism and romanticism, 413, 416, 430. 

Realistic movement, The, 416. 

Recluse, The, 322, 327. 

Recollections of the Last Days of Byron 
and Shelley, Trelawney's, 3f)2. 

Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, 84. 

Redgauntlet, 335, 339. 

Reflections on the French Revolution, 302. 

Religio Laid, 219. 

Religio Medici, 178, 374. 

Religious revivals of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, 54. 

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 88, 
295, 307. 



Remorse of Conscience, 54. 
Renaissance, The, Pater's, 412. 
Renascence, The, 67, 82, 89. 
Resolution and Independence, 326. 
Restoration, The, 179, 187 , 206-221, 222; 
Revenge, The, Young's, 264. 
Review, Defoe's, 228, 229, 268. 
Revival of letters. The, 83. 
Revolt of Islam, The, 359, 360. 
Revolt of the Tartars, The, 383, 431. 
Revolutionary Period, The, 310, 332, 350. 
Revolutionary poets. The, 350-369. 
Revolutions of Modern Europe, Carlvle's, 
399. 

Rhyme royal of James T., 86. 
Rhymed couplet. The, 206, 220, 249. 
Richard II., Shakespeare's, 69. 
Richard III., Latin play, 118; the true 

tragedy of, 118; Shakespeare's, 118. 
Richardson, Samuel, mentioned, 225, 

265; account of, 274-276; Pamela, 

274, 275; Clarissa Harlowe, 275; Sir 

Charles Grandison, 276, 277. 
Richelieu, 416. 
Richmond, map, 465, Dc. 
Rienzi, 415, 431. 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The, 320, 
323. 

Ring and the Booh, The, 437. 

Rob Roy, 338. 

Robert of Gloucester, 49. 

Robertson, William, 301. 

Robin Hood, 88; ballads of, 47. 

Robinson Crusoe, 270, 271, 272, 403. 

Rochester, map, 7, Dd; 465, Ec. 

Roderick, 332. 

Roderick Random, 278. 

Rogers's Italy, 403. 

Rogue romance. The, 226. 

Rokeby, 337, 338. 

Roland, Song of, 42. 

RoLLE, Richard, of Hampole, 54. 

Roman wall (Hadrian's), map, 7, Bb. 

Roman words in English, 3, 36. 

Romance, gothic, 333, 334. 

Romances, the French, 44. 

Romans, The, 2, 3. 

Romantic movement in English poetry, 

303-314, 316. 
Romantic movement in English fiction, 

333-350. 

Romantic movement, the new, 430. 
Romanticism, 303. 
Romanticism, German, 334. 
Romanticism and realism, 413, 416, 430. 
Romanticism in English prose, 369-389. 
Romaunt of the Rose, The, 66. 
Romeo, 146. 
Romeo and. Juliet, 105. 
Romola, 416, 427. 
Rosalind, in ^.5 You Like It, 144. 
Rosalynde, Lodge's, 126. 
Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, 
.373. 

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, mentioned, 

404, 460; account of, 459. 
Rothley Temple: Macaulay, 390; map, 

465, Db. 



INDEX 



479 



Rousseau, 399. 

Rowley, William, 151. 

Rowley forgeries, Tlie, 307. 

Eoxana, 272. 

Buhdiyat, The, 459. 

Rugby, map, 4G5, Db. 

Rule Britannia, 265. 

Rule of the Anchoresses, 53. 

Runnimede, map, 465, Dc. 

RusKiN, John, meutioned, 2, 390, 410, 
459 ; account of, 402-410 ; parentage, 
402; boyhood, 403; the University, 403, 
404; Modern Painters, 404; art criti- 
cism, 404; political economist, ethical 
teacher, 405; miscellaneous works, 406 ; 
color sense, 407 ; St. George's Guild, 
407; socialistic influence, 408; study, 
408-410. 

Ruth, 320, 326. 

Rydal Mount: Wordsworth, 321; map, 

465, Ca. 
Ryeland, map, 465, Dc. 

Sackvillb, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, 116, 
357. 

Sacrifice, The, Herbert's, 201. 

tiad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Bar- 
ton, The, 426. 

Saffron Walden, map, 465, Ec. 

St. Albans : Bacon, 172, 174; map, 465, 
Dc. 

St. Andreas, Cynewulf's, 24, 27. 
St. Asaph, map, 465, Cb. 
St. George's Guild, 407. 
St. Guthlac, Cynewulf's, 24, 27. 
St. Guthlac, unknown writer's, 27. 
St. Juliana, Cynewulf's, 24, 27. 
St. Ronan's Well, 339. 
Saint's Everlasting Rest, The, Baxter's, 
214. 

Salisbury, map, 7, Cd; 465, Dc. 

Salsette and Elephanta, 403. 

Samson Agonistes, 191, 260. 

Sandyknowe : Scott, 335. 

Sapho and Phao, Lyly's, 125. 

Sark, map, 465, Cd. 

Sartor Resartus, 398, 399. 

Satire, The, 216, 220; Swift, 223, 237, 

239, 240; Gulliver's Travels, 244-246; 

Scriblerus Club, 247; Pope, 249; Dun- 

ciad, 257; London, 284; Walpole, 333; 

Wyatt, 95. 
Satirist, spirit of the, 246. 
Saul, 437. 

Sawyer, Bob, in Pickwick Papers, 418. 
Saxons, The, 4, 5, 41, 44; East Saxons, 5 ; 

West Saxons, 5, 6; The Chronicle, 35, 

36; South Saxons, 5. 
Sayings of Alfred, 53. 
Sea Fell, map, 465, Ca. 
Scarborough, map, 465, Da. 
Scenes of Clerical Life, 426. 
Schiller, Carlyle's Life of, 397. 
Schiller, influence on Coleridge, 323; on 

Southey, 332; on " Monk" Lewis, 334. 
Scholar Gypsy, The, 411. 
School Master, The, 92, 93. 
School of Pope, The, 264. 



Scop, The, 8, 28, 29. 

Scotch poets. The, of fifteenth century, 
84 ; Dunbar, Douglas, 86. 

Scotland, History of, Robertson's, 301. 

Scott, Life of, Lockhart's, 387. 

Scott, Sir Walter, meutioned, 86, 88, 
354, 3G6, 3G9, 387, 391, 403, 413, 414, 
415, 428, 431; account of, 334-350; par- 
entage, childhood, 335 ; school days, 
law studies, 336; marriage, 337; trans- 
lations and ballads, 337; metrical ro- 
mances, 337, 338; Waverley, 338; Ivan- 
hoe, 339 ; baronetcy, 339 ; business 
failure, 340 ; Italy, 340 ; death, 341 ; 
study, 341-350. 

Scotus, John Erigena. 31. 

Scriblerus Club, The', 247, 257, 260, 264, 
283, 289. 

Seafarer, The, 19, 27. 

Seasons, Thomson's, 256, 264, 265, 304. 

Sebald, in Pippa Passes, 436. 

Second Defense, Milton's, 186. 

Sedley, Jos., 424. 

Sejanus, 136, 148. 

Selborne, map, 465, Dc. 

Selkirk, map, 465, Ca. 

Sellwood, Emily (Mrs. Tennyson), 445. 

Seneca, 116, 139. 

Sensitive Plant, The, 361. 

Sentimental Journey, The, 279. 

Sesame and Lilies, 406. 

Seven Lamps of Architecture, The, 404. 

Seventeenth century, The, 170-221. 

Severn, The : Layamon, 48 ; Wyclif, 57 ; 
map, 465, Cc. 

Shakespeare, Lectures on, Coleridge's, 
323; in Carlyle's Heroes, 399; Tales 
from, 373; The Tragedies of, 374. 

Shakespeare, plays of, mentioned : All 's 
Well, 139, 145 ; Antony and Cleopatra, 
141 ; As You Like It, 125, 126, 136, 
138, 156 ; Comedy of Errors, 136, 143 ; 
Coriolanus, 141; Cymbeline, 141, 143; 
Hamlet, 119, 121, 136, 139, 159; Julius 
Ccesar, 139, 157; King Henry IV., 138; 
King Henry V., 118, 120, 121, 138; 
King Henry VI., 118, 136, 137; King 
Henry Vltl., 141, 150; King John, 
118, 120, 137; King Richard II., 69, 
138, 139; King Richard III, 118, 138, 
139; Lear, 139; Love's Labour's Lost, 
125, 136, 143, 152; Macbeth, 139, 143, 
163; Measure for Measure, 139, 140; 
Merchant of Venice, 138, 155; Merry 
Wives, 125, 138, 143 ; Midsummer 
Night's Dream, 105, 125, 136, 143; 
Much Ado, 138; Othello, 139; Pericles, 
141; Romeo and Juliet, 105, 120, 137, 
139; Taminq of the Shrew, 138; Tem- 
pest, 141, 143, 146; Timon, 141; Titus 
Andronicus, 136; Troilus and Cressi- 
da, 140; Twelfth Night, 138; Two Gen- 
tlemen, 136; Two Noble Kinsmen, 150; 
Winter's Tale, 126, 141. 

Shakespeare, William, mentioned, 108, 
117, 118, 121, 12G, 150, 151, 170, 179, 
183, 249, 399, 403, 450 ; account of, 129- 
168 ; his company, 122 ; Globe Theatre, 



480 



INDEX 



122; Lyly's influence, 125 ; Marlowe's 
iuiiueuce, 126, 127 ; parentage, 130 ; 
boyhood, 130 ; school, 130 ; picturesque 
environment, 131 ; marriage, 132 ; 
spirit of the age, 132 ; in Loudon, 136 ; 
an actor, 136 ; first period, 136 ; 
Greene's attack, 137; the poems, 138 ; 
second period, 138 ; coat of arms, 138 ; 
purchase of New Place, 138 ; publica- 
tion of plays, 138 ; quarto texts, 139 ; 
Palladis Tamia, 139 ; Globe Theatre, 
139 ; third period, 139 ; the tragedies, 
139, 140 ; investments, 140 ; the King's 
Players, 140 ; retirement, 141 ; fourth 
period, 141 ; sonnets, 141 ; last years, 
142 ; death, 142 ; place, 142 ; art, 143 ; 
plots, 143 ; invention, 143 ; characters, 
143 ; philosophy, 145 ; purpose, 146 ; 
Ben Jonson, 148; Fletcher, 150; study, 
151-108 ; title-page of Hamlet, 153. 

Shakespeare's predecessors, 122. 

Sharpe, William, 433. 

Sharpham Park, viap, 465, Cc. 

She Stoops to Conquer, 296. 

She was a Phantom of Delight, 321. 

Sheffield, map, 465, Db. 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, mentioned, 354, 
365, 366, 368, 369, 431, 433 ; account of, 
357-365; childish imagination, 357 ; 
school days, 358 ; " Mad Shelley," 
358 ; Oxford, 358 ; marriage with Har- 
riet Westbrooke, 359; in Ireland, 359; 
Queen Mab, 359; Alastor, 360; Revolt 
of Islam, 360; separation from Har- 
riet and marriage with Mary Godwin, 
360; departure from England, 360; 
lyrics, 361; Prometheus Unbound, The 
Cenci,Adonais,'661; deatli, 362; study, 
362-365. 

Shepherd's Calendar, The, 103, 134, 251. 
Shep/ierds Hunting, Wither's, 202. 
Shepherd's Week, Gay's, 264. 
Sherwood : Robin Hood, 88. 
Sherwood Forest, map, 465, Db. 
Shirley, 425. 

Shrewsbury, map, 465, Cb. 
Shylock, in Merchant of Venice, 127, 144. 
SiDifEY, SiK Philip, mentioned, 88, 102, 
104, 105, 134, 266, 357; account of, 98- 

iqo. 

Siege of Corinth, The, 353. 
Silas Marner, 427. 
Silez Scintillans, Vaughan's, 202. 
Simon Lee, 320. 

Sir Charles Grandison, 275, 276. 
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, 449. 
Sir Launcelot Graves, 278. 
Sir Roger de Coverley, 233, 235, 236, 267. 
Sir Toby Belch, in Twelfth Night, 144, 
146. 

Sir Tristram, 45. 

Sittingbourne, map, 465, Ec. 

Sixteenth century. The, 89-169; table of 
authors, 169. 

Skelton, John, accoimt of, 87; The Nec- 
romancer, 113. 

Sketches of Life and Manners, De Quin- 
cey's, o83. 



Skiddaw, Mount, m.ap, 465, Ca. 
Skylark, The, 361. 
Sleep and Poetry, 367. 
Small House at A llington. The, 429. 
Smike, in Nicholas Niekleby, 421. 
Smollett, Tobla.s, 278, 295; account of, 
278. 

Snowdon, mountain, map, 465, Bb. 
Sohrab and Rustum, 411. 
Solway Firth, map, 465, Ca. 
Somersby : Tennyson, 443 ; map, 465, 
Eb. 

Song for St. Cecilia's Day, A, 220. 

Sonnet, Scornnot the, 141. 

Sonnet, The, 94, 96; Spenser's, 104; 

Shakespeare's, 141. 
Sonnets from the Portuguese, 437. 
Sordello, 435. 

Southampton, map, 465, Dc. 

Southey, Robert, mentioned, 317, 319, 

321, 359, 373, 381, 383, 408; account of, 

332, 333; Pantisocracy, 332; works, 

332; poet-laureate, 332. 
Southgate : Leigh Hunt, 369. 
South-Sea House, The, 374. 
Spanish romance, 266. 
Spanish Tragedy, The, 126. 
Specimen of an Induction to a Poem, 

365. 

Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 
374. 

Spectator, The, 225, 229, 231, 285; de- 
scribed, 232, 233. 

Speculum Meditantis, 59. 

Speech on Conciliation with America, 
302. 

Spencer, Herbert, 426, 442. 

Spenser, Edmund, mentioned, 100, 101, 

130, 134, 250, 251, 365, 44'9; account of, 

102-106; friendship with Sidney, 102; 

The Shepherd's Calendar, K)2, 103 ; 

Ireland, 103; The Faerie Queene, lOi; 

death, 106; study, 106, ld7. ' 
Spenserian stanza, The, 106, 265. 
Squeers, in Nicholas Nickleby, 421. 
Squire Western, in Tom Jones, 217. 
Stafford, map, 465, Cb. 
Stamford Bridge, map, 465, Db. 
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, 

411. 

Stedman, E. C, quoted, 327, 445. 

Steele, Richard, mentioned, 223, 239, 
241, 267, 270, 286, 289, 292, 374; ac- 
count of , 225-237 ; Horse Guards, 227; 
official gazetteer, 227; The Christian 
Hero, 227; periodical literature, 228; 
coffee-houses, 230; Tatler, 232; Spec- 
tator, 232, 233; journalistic schemes, 
234, 235; death, 235. 

Stephen, Leslie, 254. 

Steps to the Teniple, Crashaw's, 202. 

Sterling, Life of John, 400. 

Sterne, Lawrence, 278, 279, 414, 416; 
account of, 278, 279. 

Stevenson, Robert Lotjis, 430. 

Steyne, Lord, in Vanity Fair, 424. 

Stilliiipton, map, 4C5, Da. 

Stoke Poges: Gray, o05; map, 465, Dc. 



INDEX 



481 



Stonehen!?e, map, 7, Cd; 465, Dc. 

Stones of Venice, 404. 

Strafford, 435. 

Strange Story, A, 416. 

Stratford on Avon : Shakespeare, 130 ; 
map, 465, Db. 

Strawberry Hill, map, 465, Dc. 

Streoneshalh (Whitby), founded by Hil- 
da, 20; Caedmon, 21. 

Study suggestions : The Anglo - Saxon 
Period, 37^; Chaucer, 75-81 ; Spen- 
ser, 106, 107; the drama, 128, 129; 
Shakespeare, 151-169; Bacon, 175-178; 
Milton, 192-199 ; Addison, 235-237 ; 
Pope, 261-264 ; the novel, 280, 281 ; 
Johnson, 291, 292 ; Goldsmith, 297- 
299 ; Burns, 313, 314 ; Wordsworth, 
328-332 ; Scott, 341-350 ; Byron, 355- 
357; Shelley, 362-365; Lamb, 375; De 
Quincey, 385, 386; Macaulay, 395, 396; 
Carlyle, 401, 402; Ruskin, 408-410; 
Browning, 438-442 ; Tennyson, 451- 
458. 

Suckling, Sir John, 203; quoted, 204. 

Suffolk, settled by Angles, 5. 

Sunday, Herbert's, 201. 

SuRRKY, Earl of (Henry Howard), men- 
tioned, 89, 94, 98, 99; account of, 97, 98. 

Suspiria de Profundis, 384. 

Sutton, map, 465, Da. 

Swan Theatre, interior of the, 123. 

Swansea, map, 465, Cc. 

Swift, Jonathan, mentioned, 2, 223, 230, 
234, 235, 254, 257, 258, 261, 264, 265, 
285,289,293; account of, 237-248; im- 
periousness, 237 ; youth, 238 ; a de- 
pendent, 238; Sir William Temple, 
238; a Churchman, 239; first satires, 
239-241; Bickerstaff, 2il; a politician, 
242; Journal to Stella, 242, 243; Dra- 
pier Letters, 244 ; Gulliver^ s Travels, 
244-246; spirit of the satirist, 246; the 
Scriblerus Club, 247; death, 247; bib- 
liography, 248; friendship with Pope, 
254, 255; edited by Scott, 337. 

Swift, The (ashes of Wyclif), 57. 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 460. 

Swineshead Abbey, map, 465, Db. 

Tabard Inn, The, 64. 
Table Talk, Coleridge's, 323. 
Tables Turned, The, 320. 
Taillefer, 42. 

TaiVs Magazine, 383, 384. 
Tale of a Tub, The, 240. 
Tale of Two Cities, A, 416, 420. 
Tales from Shakespeare, 373. 
Talisman, The, 339. 
Tamburlaine, 126, 134. 
Task, The, 309. 

Taller, The, mentioned, 225, 228, 229, 

231, 285; described, 232. 
Taunton, map, 465, Cc. 
Tavistock, map, 465, Be. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 214. 
Temple, Sir William, 238. 
Tennyson, Alfred, mentioned, 387, 390, 

432, 459 ; account of, 442-458 ; " Eng- 



land's voice," 442 ; birth and early 
life, 443 iPoejns by Two Brothers, 443 ; 
the University, early volumes, 444; the 
reviews, 444, 445 ; The Princess, 445 ; 
the year 1850, 446 ; poet-laureate, 446 ; 
Li Memoriam, 447, 448 ; laureate 
verse, 448 ; Idylls of the King, 449 ; 
dramas, 449, 450; peerage, 450; last 
poems, 450 ; death, 450, 451 ; study, 
451-458. 

Tennyson, Charles Turner, 443. 

Tennyson, Frederick, 443. 

Tennyson, Hallam, 448. 

Tennyson, Life of Alfred, Lord, by his 
son, 448. 

Teutons', The, 3, 4, 5 ; their fatalism, 20. 

Tewkesbury, map, 465, Cc. 

Thackeray, W. M., mentioned, 231, 237, 
428, 431 ; quoted, Addison, 227 ; Swift, 
247 ; account of, 422-425 ; unimportant 
works, 423 ; Vanity Fair, 423 ; other 
great novels, 424 ; lectures in Amer- 
ica, 425; death, 425. 

Thalaba, 332. 

Thames River, map, 465, Ec. 
Thanet, Island of : occupied by the 
Jutes, 4 ; landing of Augustine, 19. 

Theatre, The, 235. 

Theatres, The, 119-121 ; the companies, 

121 ; decline of the stage, 151. 
Theobald, Lewis, The Dnnciad, 258. 
Theocritus, influence on Spenser, 102. 

There is a fountain filled luith blood, 308. 

Thistle and the Rose, The, 86. 

Thomson, James, mentioned, 256, 304, 
316 ; account of, 264, 265; The Sea- 
sons, 264, 265; The Castle of Indo- 
lence, 265. 

Thy r sis, 411,459. 

Timbuctoo, 444. * 

Times, The, 431. 

Tintagel, m,ap, 465, Be. 

Tintern Abbey, map, 465, Cc. 

nntern Abbey, JAnes on, 320, 324, 327. 

Tiny Tim, in Christmas Carol, 421. 

Titmarsh, Michael Angelo, pen-name of 
Thackeray, 423. 

Tito Melema, in Romola, 427. 

To a Mountain Daisy, 311. 

To a Mouse, 311. 

To a Nightingale, 367. 

To Psyche, 367. 

To the Queen, 448. 

Tom Jones, 217, 424. 

TottePs Miscellany, 98. 

TouRNEUR, Cyril, 151. 

Towneley miracle plays. 111. 

Toxophilus, 92 ; quotation, 93, 94. 

Tractate on Education, Milton's, 186. 

Tragedies of Shakespeare, The, 374. 

Tragedy, the first, 116. 

Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, The, 
126. 

Translations : Ovid, Vergil, 86 ; Seneca, 
116 ; The Bible, 56, .58, 90, 91; Psalms 
(Wither), 202 ; JEneid, 97; Dryden's, 
220 ; Homer, Dryden's, 220 ; Pope's, 



482 



INDEX 



255, 256 ; Juvenal, Persitjs, 220 ; Wal- 

lenstein, 323 ; Goeiz von Berlichingen, 
337; Wilhelm Meister, 397 ; Rubaiy&t, 
459. 

Traveller, The, 296. 
Traveller''s Song, The, 9. 
Treasure Island, 430. 
Trelawney, E. J., 362. 
Trent River, map, 465, Db. 
Trevelyan, G. O., 391, 393. 
Trial of Treasure, The, 112. 
Tristram Shandy, 278. 
Trivia, Gay's, 264. 

Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer's, 68, 266. 
Trojan War, stories of, 44. 
Trollope, Anthony, 428, 429. 
Trouveres, The, 43, 44, 48. 
True Tragedy of Richard, Dtike of York, 
The, 118. 

TuUiver, Maggie, in Mill on the Floss, 
427. 

Tulliver, Tom, in Mill on the Floss, 427. 

Tunbridge Wells, map, 465, Ec. 

Turk's Head Tavern, 289. 

Turner, J. M. W., 403, 404. 

Twa Corbies, The, 88. 

Tweed River, map, 465, Ca. 

Twickenham: Bacon, 171; Pope, 256; 
map, 465, Dc. 

Tivo Children in the Wood, The, 88. 

Two Noble Families of York and Lan- 
caster, Hall's, 117. 

Two Noble Kinsmen, 150. 

Twyford, map, 465, Dc. 

Tyndale, William, mentioned, 89, 92; 
account of, 90. 

Tyndall, John, 442. 

Tynemouth, map, 465, Da. 

TJdall, Nicholas, 115. 
Udolpho, Mysteries of, '334, 414. 
Ullswater, map, 465, Ca. 
Uncle Toby, in Tristram Shandy, 279. 
Uncommercial Traveller, The, 420. 
Unfortunate Traveller, Nash's, 126. 
Universal Prayer, Pope's, 259. 
Unto this Last, 405. 

Uppn His Majesty'' s Happy Return, 206. 
Uriah Heep, in David Copperfield, 421. 
Ui-n. Burial, 178. 
Utopia, 89, 90, 174, 244. 

Vanity Fair, 422, 423, 424, 425. 
Vathek, 333. 

Vaughan, Henry, 201, 202. 

Vercelli Book, The, 26, 27. 

Vergil, translated by Gavin Douglas, 86 ; 

translated by Dryden, 220; influence 

on Spenser, 102. 
Verse, priority over prose, 29. 
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 279, 293, 296, 

420. 
Victoria, 431. 

Victorian age, The, 389, 392, 417, 432, 442 ; 

minor poets of the, 459, 460. 
Victorian poets, The, 411, 431-460. 
Victorian Poets, Stedman's, 445. 
View of the Present State of Ireland, 103. 



Villette, 425. 

Vindication of Natural Society, Burke's, 
301. 

Virginians, The, 425. 

Vision of Don Roderick, The, 337. 

Vision of Sudden Death, The, 384. 

Vivian, Sir Walter, in The Princess, 445. 

Vivian Grey, 416. 

Vivien, 449. 

Volpone, 148. 

Vox Clamantis, 59. 

Wace, 48, 49. 
Wakefield, map, 465, Db. 
Waldhere, 28. 

Wallenstein, Coleridge's translation of, 
323. 

Waller, Edmund, 206; mentioned, 250. 
Walpole, Horace, 333. 
Walsingliam, map, 465, Eb. 
Waltbam Abbey, map, 465, Ec. 
Walton, Izaak, mentioned, 200; account 

of, 215. 
Wanderer, The, 27. 
Wantage, map, 465, Dc. 
Warden, The, 428. 
Ware, map, 465, Ec. 
Waring, 433. 

Warkworth Castle, map, 465, Da. 

Warwick, map, 465, Db. 

Warwick Castle : festivities, 117 ; Shake- 
speare, 131. 

Wat Tyler, 332. 

Watchman, The, 319. 

Watling Street, map, 7, Be to Cd. 

Waverley, 338, 354. 

Waverley, map, 465, Dc. 

Wearmouth, birthplace of Bede, 29. 

Webster, John, 151. 

Weir of Hermiston, 430. 

Wellington, Ode on the Death of the Duke 
of, 448. 

Wells next the Sea, map, 465, Eb. 
Welsh, The, 6. 

Wessex : settled by Saxons, 5, 6 ; Alfred's 

kingdom, 32; literature, 36. 
Westerbury, mffjo , 465, Cc. 
Westward Ho ! 429. 

Whitby : seat of Hilda's community, 20 ; 

Csedmon, 21 ; ravaged by the Danes, 31; 

map, 7, Cb ; 465, Da. 
White Doe of Rylstone, The, 322. 
Why Come ye not to Courte f 87. 
Widkirk miracle plays, 111. 
Widsith, 9, 10, 27. 

Wife of Bath's Tale, Dryden's, 220. 
Wight, Isle of, map, 465, Dc. 
Wiglaf , in Beowtdf, 13, 14. 
Wilhelm Meister, Carlyle's translation of, 
397. 

William of Normandy, 6 ; invades Eng- 
land, 41, 42, 

Will's Coffee-House, 220, 230, 231, 250, 
289. 

Wilson, John, " Christopher North," 

mentioned, 381, 3S7, 444. 
Wilton: Sir Philip Sidney, 99; map, 465, 

Dc. 



INDEX 



483 



Winchester, a Roman town, 3 ; Alfred's 

capital, 34 ; annals, 27 ; map, 7, Cd ; 

465, Dc. 
Windermere, map, 465, Ca. 
Windsor: James I., 86; Earl of Surrey, 

97; Pope, 250; Gray, 306; Slielley, 

360 ; map, 465, Dc. 
Windsor Forest, 251. 
Winestead, map, 465, Db. 
Wisdom for a Mail's Self, Of, Bacon's, 

174. 

Witch of Atlas, The, 361. 

Witches, and Other Night Fears, 370. 

Wither, George, 202. 

WiVs Treasury, The, 139. 

Wolfram von Eschenbach, 47. 

Wonders of the World, The, facsimile 

illustration, 51. 
Woodstock, 339 ; map, 465, Dc. 
Worcester, a Roman town, 3 ; m^p, 7, 

Be ; 465, Cb. 
Wordsworth, William, mentioned, 19, 

86, 332, 360, 366, 373, 375, 381, 383, 

387, 395, 408, 431, 446 ; quoted, 141 ; 

account of, 316-328 ; youth, 317 ; 

French Revolution, 317; France, 318; 



depression and recovery, 318 ; Dorothy 
Wordsworth, 318; Coleridge, 319; ly- 
rical ballads, 320 ; Germany, 320 ; at 
Grasmere, 321; theory, of verse, 321; 
marriage, 321 ; Soimets and Odes, 321 ; 
The Excursion, 322 ; poet-laureate, 322; 
death, 322; obligation to Burns, 324 ; 
poetic ideal, 324; material, 325 ; nature, 
326 ; study, 328. 

World and the Child, The, 112. 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, mentioned, 89, 94, 
97-99 ; account of, 94-96. 

Wyclif, John, mentioned, 42, 54, 62, 69, 
83, 90, 91 ; account of, 56-58. 

Yeast, 429. 

Yellowplush Papers, The, 423, 431. 
York, a Roman town, 3 ; monastic school, 

31 ; miracle plays, 111 ; map, 7, Cc ; 

465, Db. 

Yorkshire, Danish place-names, 37. 
Young, Edward, mentioned, 237 ; ac- 
count of, 264. 

Zanoni, 416. 
Zscbokke, 334. 



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